New Tuba

[Tubaleck]

For sure Ray is a nice guy and a very fine musician ,we competed in the championship section at london, played a piece called Of Distant memories by Edward Gregson
we finished 15 th out of 20 bands which, to us was a pretty good result against some very very stiff opposition,
as for "the ale" well we still get our fair share, we do several over night stay gigs for our sponsor so plenty time to socialise

[Tubaleck]

I play principal tuba for the NASUWT Riverside band, we competed at the National Brass Band finals 2 weeks ago in Royal Albert Hall London
https://soundcloud.com/eric-leckenby/ha ... asuwt-area our performance as north england champions conducted by Ray Farr

You have to prod them to build a website with history. http://www.4barsrest.com/news/default.asp?bid=647

The NASUWT Riverside Band is a Championship Section brass band within the North East of England. Formerly known as the Newcastle Brown Ale Band.

From an ale maker to a teacher's union. Poor folks...

we actually have 2 bands NASUWT Riverside, which is what we call the senior band, and we have the NASUWT Concert band which we call our junior band who compete in the 3rd section
in the uk,

[Tubaleck]

I play principal tuba for the NASUWT Riverside band, we competed at the National Brass Band finals 2 weeks ago in Royal Albert Hall London
https://soundcloud.com/eric-leckenby/ha ... asuwt-area our performance as north england champions conducted by Ray Farr

You have to prod them to build a website with history. http://www.4barsrest.com/news/default.asp?bid=647

The NASUWT Riverside Band is a Championship Section brass band within the North East of England. Formerly known as the Newcastle Brown Ale Band.

From an ale maker to a teacher's union. Poor folks...

which area are you in ? which band do you play in ?

[Wyvern]

I have an adult student that just bought and returned one. He brought it over when he got it. One valve was very loose, one very tight, and the other worked. Caps cross threaded very easily. Valve ports didn't line up with valve tubing such that there was no way to do a valve alignment. When one port lined up, another was out. The sound was dull and response was slow. Probably a valve or some other assembly issue, I would think

When I hear of people having so much trouble, I do wonder if there are different standards of tuba being sent to different suppliers. Out of dozens of the Eb tubas Wessex have sold, I have not come across any with valve ports out of alignment. We did have a euphonium with such problem 2 years ago, but nothing since after my wife gave the factory a mouthful of Chinese!

The Eb tubas we receive in my experience play pretty consistently - more so than the output of Besson when they were made in the UK going from feedback from London pros who have tried both. And I would not offer 3 year guarantee, if I was not confident they will stand up well in use.

The first batch of instruments to Michigan when Wessex started up in USA had far more issues than I ever experience coming to UK (poor Andy was quite demoralised), which at the time made me wonder if the factory did not realise they were supplying the same company, and did not make the usual effort.

The valve threads are better than they were, but could still be improved and that was an issue I discussed with production manager when we met in Shanghai a couple weeks ago. Also general quality control and consistency. But they are genuinely working to improve. There was one stay on the Eb tuba of which several sold have come unsoldered. I raised that issue in the Spring and the latest batch of the tuba are now made with much stronger stay with larger soldering point - so hopefully that issue solved.

[NCSUSousa]

When I hear of people having so much trouble, I do wonder if there are different standards of tuba being sent to different suppliers.

The more I hear about the clones from China, the more I think that you're statement is correct. I've sent you a PM about the cases. I'll follow up with another PM about one other thing.
I'd rather not broadcast here on the message board since I think the issue has been addressed correctly and don't want to hurt the reputation of the company involved.

[Wyvern]

Mostly, I'd think that going down the road of "my Jinbao model XXX is significantly different from everyone else's Jinbao model XXX" isn't a particularly productive road.

There will definitely be specification differences to most Wessex horns (and cases), because we do make a number of special specifications (the gold brass higher leadpipe on Eb tuba being a very noticeable example) with the aim to make a better instrument - but I cannot know of quality differences beyond the extra preparation and quality checks we ourselves undertake before sale. I have just given you my observations from experience.