Posted by DENNIS on November 21, 2003 at 12:38:04:
In Reply to: Re: Un-stuff a stuffy bottom end posted by Dan Schultz on November 21, 2003 at 09:11:01:
I have the horn already. It plays very good mid and upper as far a response. The intonation is good throughout and the sound is very nice. The valves are inline very well, actually better than any other horn I have. I am going to fit new guides and correct a very slight rotational alignment on a couple of the valves (a change of about .030) but mainly to quiet them some.
When I got this horn it played good and sounded good. I check it out with a bore scope to see about the alignment of the valves. All the valve set too high (about .100 high) and stroked too far (about .100 too much). I put the correct felts and corks on to fix this and other than the little bit of rotational problem with a couple valve it was really close (less than .010 or .015). After that the horn really got responsive and played great.
Something that come to mind was that it may have made the horn better only in the mid and upper playing and didn't really help the lower. I wonder if the valve mis-alignment made the mid and upper fell stuffy and this made the full range of the horn play evenly stuffy, so making the lower range not as noticeably stuffy. Maybe this happened because there was enough air to pass through the valves to play the lower notes and what ever made them stuffy then still made them stuffy but the air needed for mid and upper could not get through the valve easily and made them stuffy. And that is how it made the whole horn a little stuffy. So when I fixed the valve mis-alignment it didn't help the lower range just really the upper. Am I way off here?
As far as leak. I am sure it has no bad leaks but the 3rd valve slide doesn't have a real good pop when you pull it out quick. I will check that to see if it is a slide or valve leak.
Does a leak hurt the bottom range more than the upper ranges?
I can't see that the stuffyness is worse with certain valves other than the natural stuffyness that comes with adding tube length. It just gets stuffier as you play lower.
I would be willing to work on some tubing and even the routeing of tubing if it would help but I wonder if the problem could be farther down the bugel.
what do ya think?
Dennis