Re: Cerveny helicon


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Posted by Klaus on February 08, 2001 at 21:39:20:

In Reply to: Cerveny helicon posted by Philip Jensen on February 08, 2001 at 19:01:07:

There are board members, who without earning their income that way, still can do a good deal of brass repairs and restorations. Because they have skills as well as tools.

I am not one of those fortunate persons. I am only a collector. Demanding my instruments to be in a fully playable condition. Which they are, apart from a couple of the recent eBay buys from Germany, where prices, customs, and shipping are more attractive for me. So I have not been burned severely.

But I would not touch the helicon in question. Unless I were a skilled repairer with very good relations to and a very good overview over spare part suppliers.

And then I still would be unsure about the level of corrosion of the sore spots of the brass body. Here we are not talking of the tank armory quality brass tubing walls of older US instruments.

Furtherly my confidence in older clockspring rotaries with S-links is limited. They tend to imply the employment of an extra percussion group.

If the brass of the body and bell can be considered sound. If the missing tubing can be reestablished. And if the rotors can be made rotating with a reasonable compromise between freedom and tightness. Then I would invest in a full new set of paddles and levers, like the ones Frieder put on his "German" St. Petersburgers.

But only after I had calculated the ratio between the necessary investments in this wreck compared to the price of a new Cerveny helicon.

If this posting comes out in a too negative tone towards the project, then it at least might provoke one of the repairing geniuses to correct me.

Klaus



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