TromboneChat

My Bach 50 with Kanstul CR valves has stock mechanical linkages. They have a ball-and-socket linkage: metal balls on the lever arms and the stopper, plastic sockets on the linkage arms. I am thinking about asking my tech to change my bass linkage to strings. The King and Conn trombones I played in years past had wonderful action with strings—little effort needed, reduced thumb movement (due to mechanical advantage), and quiet.

Any one (techs?) with experience doing this? What about other linkages? Other thoughts?

Thanks.

Big problem is that for string actuation to work the lever needs to be on the opposite side of the valve. Don't know whether it's easy to manage that with a lever change or how much more of the actuation part of the valve needs to be changed.

The geometry is not hard. Any tech who will do a good job is already aware of which side of the stop arm will face the last bit of lever, as well as the related challenges of getting stop arm bits out of the way of the string.

Any idea if Benn Hanson is still working out of Seattle?

IMHO the biggest challenge will be deciding who you want to do it and if you want to be able to switch back and forth between systems.

If you look at the King 7B & 8B and the Benge 290 linkages you'll get an idea of the parts that would need changing.

Benn is still working on horns but not sure how his schedule is right now. He did a string on the Rotax conversation on my 79H - quiet, smooth, and quick.

Depending on the instrument, sometimes the cork plate needs to be reversed so it can turn into a bigger project. My suggestion is to replace the nylon sockets on your current linkage. If your current nylon sockets have a lot of mileage on them, the replacement sockets will make a HUGE difference.