Worst thing flushed out of a tuba

[Roger Lewis]

A friend found a 16 lb shot put in his.

Roger

[bort]

This is not worst thing I've ever flushed or scraped out of a tuba, but it made a heck of an impact!

A few years ago, I was at Dillon's, and tried a brand new Miraphone 188. I couldn't get notes to center, it felt like it had water in it I couldn't get out, and it was all around a squirrely tuba. Then I decided to spin the tuba, and out falls a single styrofoam peanut. After that, it was an AWESOME tuba, as expected. So small, such a big impact.

Also recently heard a story from a pro who is on this board, who tried a recently bought tuba and was underwhelmed and disappointed by it. He cleaned it out, and found a piece of shelf liner that had gotten into the tuba. After that, it was the great tuba that he expected.

Moral of the story -- yes, some tubas are duds. But get them cleaned and serviced before declaring them as duds.

[bort]

This is not worst thing I've ever flushed or scraped out of a tuba, but it made a heck of an impact!

PS -- I would imagine that the red solo cup had much more of an impact than the styrofoam.

[Dan Schultz]

It's been a while back but one Saturday morning at a Dixieland rehearsal at my house... I picked up a King 2341 bell-front that I had not played for a few days and no sound would come out at all. I just put it back on the stand and picked up another horn (fortunate to have many choices!). The next day I took it down to the shop and found a dead Starling in the back bow. Apparently the bird got in there a couple of days earlier when I used the horn for an outdoor gig. It hadn't been in there long enough to make a stink and shoved out quite easily using a plumbers snake up through the main tuning slide.

Being in the repair business... I'm quite used to finding 'interesting' stuff inside horns. I once found a 1983 TubaChristmas badge hanging inside the back bow of a Miraphone 183... hanging like a stovepipe dampener. It had been in there even a while after I bought the instrument and wasn't discovered until I was doing a little dentwork with balls and magnets. It 'slammed shut' when the ball ran up against it and no air would pass.

[bort]

HA! That's hilarious.

[tokuno]

Similar experience: A few years ago, I bought a sight-unseen, like-new King 2341s for an almost too-good-to-be-true sum.
It was playable, but didn't live up to the 2341 reputation: fuzzy attacks, poor centering, intonational quirks.

I cleaned and snaked it twice, but each time it still played like the airstream was whistling past an obstruction.
On the 3rd cleaning, the snake snagged a rubbery seal that had evidently been protruding into the tubing between valve block and lead pipe. Wow, huge difference. Great playing horn that I still own.

I still wonder if the original owner has played another 2341, or if his opinion is based solely on that one lousy-playing sample.

Worst thing flushed out: used sanitary napkin in an eBay sousaphone.

A few years ago, I was at Dillon's, and tried a brand new Miraphone 188. I couldn't get notes to center, it felt like it had water in it I couldn't get out, and it was all around a squirrely tuba. Then I decided to spin the tuba, and out falls a single styrofoam peanut. After that, it was an AWESOME tuba, as expected. So small, such a big impact.

Also recently heard a story from a pro who is on this board, who tried a recently bought tuba and was underwhelmed and disappointed by it. He cleaned it out, and found a piece of shelf liner that had gotten into the tuba. After that, it was the great tuba that he expected.

Moral of the story -- yes, some tubas are duds. But get them cleaned and serviced before declaring them as duds.

[peter birch]

a while ago one of my sectional colleagues got a fairly dodgy Ab out of his tuba

[Dan Schultz]

Finding things in tubas is pretty normal. I have a King 2341 on the bench right now that yielded a foot off of a drum throne. I bought this horn at a school auction about two years ago. Aside from the junk on the inside... I found MANY bad solder joints! Don'tcha just wonder why some horns play well and some not so well?

[EMC]

Dead rat, was in a school horn that had been left out all summer , oh my god so gross.. dony even want to think about it

[TubaSteve]

My own personal story is not too bad, certainly not like the dead rat or mouse story, but when I picked up my first Reynolds BBb recording tuba, it played rather stuffy. I figured that as it had been a school horn, I decided to clean it out with a hose in the back yard. I found a cheese sandwich in it. The processed cheese and the bread looked like you could still eat it.

When my brother was in high school band in around 1970, they played a parade at an event called "Fish Days". Well, someone threw a dead fish down one of the sousaphones. This was the last parade of the summer marching season, so the horn sat on the rack in the band room until getting ready for doing a field drill for football half time over a month later................ I guess the guy almost passed out.

Steve

[Tuba Guy]

I found an old Conn sousa online. Met up with the guy and it was super stuffy. Bought it, took it home and pulled out a stuffed monkey. Now I have a new favorite sousa