Rudolph Meinl vs Hirshbrunner vs Miraphone vs ???

[pianolance]

What's your opinion of these brands or is there another brand that's your favorite? If so, why?

[circusboy]

This question is probably too broad for very clear answers, but here's my attempt to help a little:

Rudolf Meinl makes fantastic, expensive tubas by hand in Germany. I've only ever gotten my hands on one of them (5/4 CC piston), but it blew me away. Just loved it.

Hirsbrunner was another high-end, maker of tubas by hand in Switzerland. They've been out of business for a few years now, though. They're not all that easy to find used.

Miraphone is a larger manufacturer in Germany that makes many different horns at many (more moderate than the above) price points.

Other popular makers on the level of Miraphone are Meinl-Weston (not related to Rudolf Meinl), B&S and Alexander in Germany and Yamaha in Japan. Cerveny is based in Czechia and makes solid horns for a bit less money. Eastman and Wessex are probably the best coming out of China.

I hope that helps. If you're serious, though, you really need to get yourself to a conference or showroom to try several of them yourself. It's likely that one horn or one brand will speak to you. Good luck. Let us know how it goes.

[Douglas]

Rudolf Meinl makes incredible tubas by hand in Germany. I think their 3/4 CC is just about the most underrated instrument on the market.

Hirsbrunner is out of business. They sound great, but in my experience, they have intonation issues. Some HB2 tubas used rotary valves that didn't work well in hot situations. Adams bought the tooling and designs. Now, they manufacture many of their models and have made several improvements to most of them.

Miraphone tubas are great. Generally play very well in tune and sound great. Less expensive than RM and HB/Adams, but I think they're roughly equivalent in quality. When someone says that classic German sound, I hear Ron Davis playing his Miraphone 188 in my head. I really like their f tubas, they generally play well in tune and are a lot more user-friendly around the low C than many of their German counterparts.

Other brands worth considering for high-end instruments include Meinl-Weston, B&S, Alexander, Gronitz, Walter Nirschl, and Yamaha. Eastman and ZO are the best coming out of China. Instruments from these Chinese brands are generally of acceptable quality, not as good as German/Japanese instruments, but generally cost less than German/Japanese instruments. Cerveny produces instruments that are of a lesser quality than German/Japanese instruments, for a bit less money. I've played several Cerveny tubas, and I've never found one that I'd want to daily drive.

Wessex is a Jinbao dealer; they mark their products way up, but they do have a few exclusive models, albeit of the same JB quality. I will say that Wessex has some of the best quality control and customer service of the JB dealers. If you're looking for JB, there are a ton of dealers. I have found Wessex, Mack Brass, and Dillon Music to be the easiest to work with.

I'd check out a conference from the International Tuba Euphonium Association (https://iteaonline.org/conferences/) or the Army Tuba Euphonium Workshop (https://usarmyband.com/workshops/tuba-e ... m-workshop). There is usually a good selection of instruments to play at those conferences.