I spent much of today tracking down the causes of various missed
and/or softer notes in our Ampico B.  I believe I have found the cause
of most if not all, of the problems.  Several tubes in the drawer were
kinked or compressed by the covering panels or sharp corners.

I've been looking at David Saul's book as a reference and he notes
that later model B's had some tracker tubing fed into metal elbows to
prevent the kind of collapsing I'm seeing.  I can imagine a few of
these tubes I found might be exactly the ones he's talking about.

Does anyone have detailed information on which tubes were so treated
in later models?  I'm thinking I may want to do the same in our
early-model B.

In some cases it seems like a straight metal piece to prevent squishing
by the covering panels might also be necessary.  I can't tell if the
problem was caused by the rebuilder routing the tubes incorrectly or
not.  It seems pretty like a pretty logical layout to me and generally
follows the illustrations in Saul's book.

I think some of these tubes were compressed for so long that they are
"remembering" their constricted state.  I could replace the tubing but
I fear the same kinking will eventually happen again.  Any opinions on
what to use for replacement and whether metal elbows or straight pieces
are a good idea?

David Greene