With all due respect, from a mechanical perspective, it is quite easy to have two rotary valves operate simultaneously:
http://www.osmun.com/prod/Schmid/es4g_lg.jpg Schmid incorporates this into his triples and descants - and they work quite well. If you want the valves to operate so that they are on/off at the same time, you just need a bar to connect them with a single pivot. If you want both to be on/on or off/off, then you need a bar between them without a central pivot. With a solid bar and no central pivot, you could have as many valves as you wanted operating at the same time. This should sound familiar to anyone who has ever driven a car or looked under the hood. Standard cars have 4 pistons which can operate in a smooth cycle thanks to a solid crankshaft. So at one fourth of each part of the turn the pistons operate a separate stroke of the four stroke process to keep the crankshaft turning. A six cylinder is the same but with more parts of a turn. An eight cylinder can have eight, etc. There are engines with up to 16 pistons (or more) and each piston can have at least 4 valves. That's why you may have heard of a 32 valve V8. You may argue that a lot can go wrong with operating a lot of valves on a horn - but a car (or prop engine) does this cycle several thousand times per minute - and sometimes has to do this hours per day for years - with little maintenance. I'd like to see one etude that is going to put as much stress on a horn in regards to simultaneous valve operation as a Pratt and Whitney airplane engine from 70 years ago. -William -----Original Message----- From: Hans Pizka <[email protected]> To: The Horn List <[email protected]> Sent: Wed, Jul 7, 2010 1:55 am Subject: Re: [Hornlist] McCracken 8 Valve Single Bb What should two valves, one at the entrance to the added tube, the other at the exit from that tube improve ? When they first built the Viennese Valves, nobody had the idea to use the idea of the beer tap to construct a rotary valve, which does not rotate any way, but can be turned the one or the opposite way. Combining two of these rotors is a very delicate operation as it surely will make adjusting the valves double complicate. It also makes the horn ready for clumsy action by too many factors. I have not seen any such instrument, but I can imagine, that it was constructed to have both "half"-valves open "with the wind". But when closing the valve, the two halves will close "against the wind" anyway. The reason to construct such, is the same always: to improve playing by modifying the hardware. If one has difficulties to slur from open note to a note not available as open note, they try to improve the valve action (opening). The invention of the valves was not very successful at the beginning & questioned by the composers, because the "software" (playing technique) could not be improved quickly enough. It was not the finger technique, it was the breath control needed for the "new" slurs. If this is not improved, -and many players are not able to control their breath enough to camouflage the defect of valve slurs- then no technical installation on the instrument would be able to help out. Just listen to some very few superb handhorn players, who treat their instrument in a way, one hardly can distinguish between open & "manipulated" notes. That´s it. ############################################################################################################################### Am 07.07.2010 um 06:02 schrieb [email protected]: > I tried to sketch out the idea (Vienna pumpen horns have 6 valves) > and I could see how it works, but if they're 8 rotor valves I'd > really like to see how they are arranged, if the concept really > works, and if it improves anything. > > I think the idea is to allow the air to go through all of the valves > regardless of what fingering you play so that valve combinations > don't 'feel' longer or different. But then again, when I have used a > single Bb for anything I rarely use any combinations of valves and > most things can be played with 1 or 2 or just 3 for 1 and 2. I like > shorter horns wherever possible. > > I'm surprised Hornplayer.net doesn't have a collection of odd valve > layouts or even better resolution photos of the V2. > > As another thought, maybe we horn players are self-conscious about > what our horns look like and don't want them to look too abnormal > when in reality most people outside of our section would never be > able to tell the difference. > > -William > > > > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: David A. Jewell <[email protected]> > To: The Horn List <[email protected]> > Sent: Tue, Jul 6, 2010 11:26 pm > Subject: Re: [Hornlist] McCracken 8 Valve Single Bb > > > I don't have a photo of it, does one even exist? However, I think I > can explain > > > > the concept after reading the archive. Each valve slide has an > input and an > > output valve, thus making for valves. I am presuming that the other > two valves > > are for a stopping or "C: valve. Think of each valve as one half of > a Vienna > > valve, where instead of two pistons each valve key has two rotors. > > > > It truly would be something to see. > > Paxmaha > > > > > > > > > > > > ________________________________ > > From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> > > To: [email protected] > > Sent: Tue, July 6, 2010 5:07:54 PM > > Subject: [Hornlist] McCracken 8 Valve Single Bb > > > > I was randomly looking up horns and I came across a Hornplayer.net > archive > > mentioning the bi-valve McCracken single Bb. > > > > I'm trying to work out in my brain how this is done, but I can't > figure it out. > > Does anyone have any photos of this thing? > > > > -William > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > post: [email protected] > > unsubscribe or set options at > > https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/paxmaha%40yahoo.com > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > post: [email protected] > > unsubscribe or set options at > https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/valkhorn%40aol.com > > > > _______________________________________________ > post: [email protected] > unsubscribe or set options at > https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/hpizka%40me.com _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/valkhorn%40aol.com _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
