Piston or Rotary Vavles?

[corps fan]

interesting that this comes up just after i finish a class that covered this (amongst other things)...the rotary valve has a smoother feel, benificial for a more legato style playing, while the piston valve gives you better control for faster passages. The piston valve (IMO) is easier to maintain, but until recently there weren't many quality horns with piston valves, hence why most professionals lean towards the rotary valve. (Quality horns with piston valves has become more common and there are now some good horns to choose from)

Edited June 12, 2007 by corps fan

[Leland]

I own one tuba of each, and the piston horn has a 5th rotor valve.

My rotary is almost maintenance-free, but the piston is easier to clean. My fingers don't have to move as far on the rotary, yet the piston's valve action is smoother. The rotary's finger paddles are bent & spaced to fit my fingertips exactly, but I can also modify the piston valves' buttons to achieve the same effect.

For 95% of the music out there, for 95% of the players, it really doesn't matter. A working set of valves will move faster than the player's fingers, no matter what. Pick what you like.

[LunchboxTScontra]

I've played on a Miraphone 186 BBb with rotary valves, and on a Meinl Weston 2145 with 4 piston 1 rotar. I've come to enjoy piston valves, they're much louder but their easier to clean and keep up with in the maintanence side of things. I've come to notice that Rotary valves are quite succeptabe (sp?) to Geometric Lock and gunk up quite easily (this is probably more of a problem for high school students who don't know how to maintain their valves ) Overall I prefer piston valves over rotary valves.

[Knuckles]

When I was trying out tubas, most of the rotary valved ones I tried were really sticky, so I ended up going with a piston valve. I suppose my opinion is a little biased.

[Old School Contra Guy]

We'll dig this one out of the past..Back when I was playing, I owned an Alexander 4 valve rotary. Legend had it, it had been captured by the American Army back in WWII from a German Army band. It had a patch that looked like it could have been a bullet hole. That thing had it's own built-in percussion section. The linkage was SO noisy. I also played on both a Miraphone 4 valve rotary, and a King bell-from 3 piston. I found I was faster on the rotary horns. Try playing the piccolo part from Stars and Stripes on a piston horn ! (we did that in college band)

[BMBob]

The one main thought I have concerning this is that if you go with a rotary horn, be sure it is a company that has good quality rotors. Pistons take more constant maintenance, but bad rotors are worse than anything else when it comes to keeping an instrument in good playing condition.

[Periphery]

There are a lot of factors involved in making this choice. However, it always comes down to the single most important factor: How do you sound on any given horn?

Pistons and rotors play a bit differently. On older horns there was a marked difference in the SOUND created by the two types of horns, rotary being very Germanic and piston being very American. The differences were pretty large in some cases. Nowadays the differences are quite a bit less, with the more American sounding horns being the most popular in the most places. There are a few cases where a horn is designed as one and then produced as either, the PT-6/PT-6P and the Neptune being two very good examples. The piston version plays and sounds different than the rotary version every time. This is due to the different location of the valve sets in the length of the bugle.

Rotary horns, in most cases, have the valves set over to the player's left side and have a very long leadpipe, whereas piston horns have the valves set more in the middle, with the leadpipe entering the valve set from right near where the mouthpiece needs to be. What this does is sets the piston set MUCH CLOSER to the mouthpiece. If you want to build a horn in both "flavors" that share the same bell and outer branches you will end up having to use a piston set with a much smaller bore than what would be required by a rotary version of the same horn. The piston version will also use a leadpipe that can be up to a foot and a half shorter than what would be needed by a rotary version built on the same bugle. A rotary horn, having the valve set more that a foot farther down the tapering bugle will have to be much larger, so all of the valves slides will be larger on a rotary horn compared to a piston horn built from the same bugle. This causes the horns to sound and respond very differently.

This is why my Alexander is wrapped up so "small" but plays so freaking loud. The bell, while a small diameter at the flare, has a pretty large throat. The bore is .820" through the valve set. (The leadpipe has a fast taper, too.) It is small looking but is big playing, producing an organ-like sound that is arguably the epitome of Germanic tone. The sound produced by a classic Alexander 163 is to die for.

However, my much larger Meinl-Weston 2265 has pistons. The valves are set in the center of the body and the leadpipe is pretty short. This tuba is enormous but only has a .750" bore. The two horns blow and respond like opposites. This big boy acts and feels like a 4/4 horn. I blows just like a Miraphone 188. It takes FAR LESS air to get tons of sound from it. But it is also very resistant and backs up in the very low range when pushed hard. In comparison, the Alex blows so freely that I constantly have to work on long tones with it to keep my buzz as efficient as possible or I cannot make phrase points easily. Another "however" is that my free-blowing Alex can use just about any alternate fingering I can come up with and the tone never suffers. I play my high Gs 13 when they should be open; no change in sound and very little change in response. The giant 2265 can lay waste on stage like a cannon but has a hard time with a lot of alternate fingerings because they sound different in tone and feel stuffy.

(For size comparisons with a drum corps perspective, the King 2341 concert tuba and the venerated K-90 contrabass bugle share a .689" bore; a Dynasty super magnum bore contra has one of .750" and my Alexander CC tuba has, as I said, an .820" bore.)

I own two piston tubas (a CC and an F) and two rotary ones (also a CC and an F) that I use daily in my orchestra job. (I also have one piston Eb, a two piston K-90 and a piston/rotor Olds Ultratone, for those who G.A.S. :) ) There are good and bad things about each set up. For me personally, the type of valves will affect response on slurs, flexibility and articulated runs, and the placement of the valve set affects how the tuba will respond and blow. The type of valves used usually determines the basic placement of the valves. The sounds of my piston horns are more broad and American. My two rotary horns are very smooth with slurs and have a much more colorful, Germanic tone.

Here are some pictures of what I am talking about.

1. The first one is of my Alexander 163, my King K-90 and my Yamaha YFB-621 F. If you look carefully you can see just how large the bore of the Alex is as compared to the King and the Yamaha (which are both at .689"). You can see how long the leadpipe is on the rotary Alex versus the shorty one on the Yamaha. The type of valve usually (but not always, as in the case of Marzan "slant rotary" tubas) dictates such a setup. (Note: Alex has 4 valves, King 2, and Yamaha 5.)

2. The second one is of my 2265 CC next to my Yamaha F. You can see that is also has a short leadpipe and, therefore, a smaller bore than one would expect for such a large horn. (As I said: .750" through the valves.) (Note: Both horns have 5 valves.)

3. This is my Cerveny CFB 654-6 F tuba. The leadpipe looks short, but it is just wrapped funny. It is roughly analogous to the little Yamaha F shown above but is a good bit larger in bore, again, because of the type of valve dictating where the set physically needs to be located, requiring a longer leadpipe, in turn requiring a larger valve bore size. It has a .716" bore through valves 6, 1, 2, 3 and 4, with 5 located much farther down the taper and having an .820" bore. (Yes, it has 6 valves.)

Edited September 4, 2007 by Periphery

[Periphery]

The one main thought I have concerning this is that if you go with a rotary horn, be sure it is a company that has good quality rotors. Pistons take more constant maintenance, but bad rotors are worse than anything else when it comes to keeping an instrument in good playing condition.

This is a good point.

The only commonly purchased rotary horn to watch out for regarding troubles with either the actual valve or the linkages would be the Saint Petersburg. While they have improved dramatically over the last 15 or so years they still need to be hand picked. If you are in a school PO situation and are buying several (from the never-to-be-named, litigious seller) and cannot go out to test and select the specific ones you will be getting then you might want to consider other options. Also, outside of Dalyan (which are good), avoid all "mystery brand" Chinese and Indian tubas like the plague. This includes (for the time being) M&M and just about any other NEW tuba for sale on eBay. Reputable tuba sellers do not sell NEW horns on eBay. (Plenty of great USED tubas on eBay, however.) These M&M tubas are getting better and will most certainly be on the good list someday, but are still a bit of a mystery and the replacement parts situation is also not very well known. Let others buy these horns. The OP needs to avoid them. (Again, except for Dalyan, which seem to be very good horns for the price and have a good, known parts supplier for local shops. One thing, Dalyans sometimes play really flat and have to have the main slides cut a bit to bring them up to pitch and also have some room to push in for cold days. A good shop can do this for you.)

As far as piston valves go, there are persistent problems with high end Yamaha pistons being far too tight when new. They usually have to be lapped at a shop to get them to stop hanging up all the time. Run-in time on these can be long. King 2341 valves hang a LOT and tend to get sent back to "the Cyborg" (current nickname for UMI or whatever they are right now) for replacement horns. Great tubas for the $$$ if you can get a good one. If you buy a King 2341 or a Conn 56J (same horn, one is BBb and one is CC) you might need to take it to a shop and have the pistons lapped. It is worth it if you really like the horn. Some of the upper end Meinl-Weston tubas using the notorious "Big Valve" piston set (pretty much ALL current MW piston models) also have to deal with hanging up a lot. Light lapping and the use of Hetman's lubes seem to be the answer for these horns. I lapped my Yamaha 1st and 2nd pistons at the shop twice and switched to Blue Juice for that horn and have had nearly zero problems with it since. Others? I don't know.

Oiling and maintenance are also issues when deciding between pistons and rotors. Pistons require daily oiling (especially if new) but little else outside of maybe weekly cleaning or wiping down. Rotary valves, properly set up, need next to zero care for up to six months at a time if the player will dump a few spoons full of PISTON oil (not rotary) down the leadpipe every few days to clean it out and keep it wet. (Piston oil down the leadpipe is excellent for any instrument as it removes some of the crap that builds up in the leadpipe.) Rotaries have many more lube points than pistons. The linkages must be cared for and this needs some knowledge on the part of the player/student. Disassembly is easy, if time consuming, so long as you have someone who actually knows what they are doing show you how and you use the proper tools for the job. This is needed about twice each year on a regularly played horn.

For me, the differences are of no concern. I play the horns that I sound best on. My job depends on this, so such things are moot points for me unless they affect the musical product. Sound and response are key in such a decision for a personal horn. However, everything listed else here would come into play if I were assisting a local band director in buying tubas, in some cases over sound and response issues.

Edited August 21, 2007 by Periphery

[Periphery]

Geeze. No responses in 25 days. I guess I killed this thread. I need to keep my mouth shut. Sorry for the long responses, guys.

[Leland]

Geeze. No responses in 25 days. I guess I killed this thread. I need to keep my mouth shut. Sorry for the long responses, guys.

Hehe...

Usually, it's not so much "killed" as it is fully answering the question.