Excellent work by Dana Hofer

[Trevor Bjorklund]

Dana completely overhauled my Miraphone 188 this summer and I just picked her up from the train station.

This was already a good tuba when I first got it in 2011 but had been repaired many times by various people of various skill levels over 30 years. But Dana completely disassembled the entire instrument, straightened out/re-aligned EVERYTHING with new braces, and of course smoothed out all the dents and put on some new bow guards and a new first valve crook. This horn is now unbelievable (and makes me sound better than I am)! Words fail to communicate just how good this tuba feels to play.

A huge thank you to Dana Hofer Brass Repair in Des Plaines, IL, for your amazing work!

[tubarepair]

Dana's a great tech and has given some fine repair clinics at NAPBIRT conventions...

[swillafew]

Dana's a great tech

+1

[bort]

Pictures!

[Evil Ronnie]

Great guy. I took my Holton TR-180 bass trombone to Dana several months ago. He did a fine job on it for a very fair price. We have discussed adding an F attachment to my Elkhart Bach 42, as well as a modification to the 180, replacing the dependent rotors with independent Thayer or other valve systems.

[Trevor Bjorklund]

Bort - first of all, don't sell your 188. These are just such great tubas... I'd hate to see you full of regret down the road. Second, here is a pic (before the linkage went back on), although you really can't easily see the real work that went into the minutiae that makes a horn play better. What you can see is how nice the bottom bow looks, how dent free the mouth pipe and slides are, etc. We decided against buffing the bell to death so as to keep it as thick and uniform as possible - plus I don't really care about looks. I don't have any "before" pics on this computer but let's just say that I don't miss any of the 30 years of character the tuba developed in the form of dings, dents, scrapes, and beat-to-hell bow guards on each end.

188.jpg

I should also take a moment to thank Josh Wirt, who did an excellent job of packing up my baby and sending her to me via Amtrak (who were extremely nice, professional, and easy to deal with)!

[Josh deVries]

+1 to all of this. I just moved to the Chicago area and Dana was nice enough to pick me up from the train station and even give me a lift to the airport when I needed to go after I picked up my horn. Not to mention, the work he did on my Kanstul was AWESOME.

Great guy and great work!

[luke_hollis]

Ditto on great work by Dana