Wisemann 900 Leadpipe Reddish Spots

[Worth]

Results for those interested....
Borescope results positive for green slime (which is now removed) and, most importantly, negative for internal metal disease. Lee Stofer's surface blade test demonstrates this is a lacquer issue and or surface phenomenon. Feeling fortunate that this is limited to the lead pipe. Next step, setting up a chem clean. Thanks to all for the input. Thinking now of other inventive ways to use the borescope. A very cool tool indeed.

[Ken Crawford]

[Worth]

Thanks Bloke for the candid assessment and contact info. I dig what the 900 has done to help me up my game and plan to keep this baby for the long haul. I'll contact Wisemann and work on getting a replacement lead pipe for when the inevitable occurs. As they are not a custom manufacturer not sure about getting one in nickel silver but I'll sure ask. In the meantime a good opportunity for all to revisit leadpipe metallurgy and cleanliness.

[E. Green]

Chinese brass is made out of old door knobs and ashtrays. That is why the German manufacturers use metal made by Wieland-Germany and gold brass, 80% copper, for leadpipes.

Eugene

[Donn]

Maybe they call them "red" states because of this?

After lo these many years with every type of external corrosion and no apparent red rot, I tend to be a little skeptical myself, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that everything red is not red rot.

If you're like me and your instruments haven't rotted out from under you before, then maybe it's not to worry about overly. The guy who trashed the Alexander showroom, or the guys who have what machinists call "piss finger" who can't touch metal without causing it to corrode, they had better look out.

[Donn]

Oh, it exists, no doubt about that. But if OP has checked it out a couple of ways and it doesn't look like his case is actually red rot, then he would join the very large number of people who saw red corrosion on their tubas that turned out not to be red rot, am I right?

Some tubas seem especially predisposed to red superficial corrosion, maybe due to lacquer formula? For example the Bach tubas that were made on the Olds production tooling, and to some extent the Olds tubas too.