Perfect Porting

So fyi: rant incoming.

So here is my beef: Bob Reeves valve alignments. Bob Reeves charges people "X" amount of money to take your horns valves and align them perfectly along the ports. The process is simple he has neoprene and hard plastic spacers made to a specific legnth. He then measures how off the porting is in your horn and cuts away the valve stem til the ports are within thousands of a millimeter of "perfect."

There is only one problem: while the verticle alignment might be perfect the horizontal alignment remains imperfect.

The facts are these: When a horn's valves are manufactured the valve guide is cut to a specific width which is less than the width of the corresponding slots in the casing. This isn't a flaw, it has to be this way because the piston would fail to work properly if the guide and slot were pefectly fit.

Morover the the space that is through the upper part of the piston is not flush for this same reason. A perfect fit would lead to a phenominal amount friction leading to sticking and terrible action.

This micro space can be exacerbated with poor production quality which is seen very often amongst the major brands. Therefor if you factor this in you ccome to the conclusion that your valves will hardly ever be perfect horizontally.

I challenge you! Open your second valve slide annd look in towards your third valve. You will definitely be able to see your casing.

Now think about this: knowing this is a very common occurrance do our horns ever seem off? Of course not! If they did we wouldn't be playing them!

So if it doesn't affect our sound or playing at all why would we pay money to fix a problem that isn't really there? We shouldn't. What comes standard from the factory is not only adequate but really the only sensible option.

So there, that is my beef with valve alignments.