Come again? Tubas are more expensive than ever, except for the budget-priced Chinese ones. Just over the past 20 years, the pricing for most German tubas have doubled in price. Some models have nearly tripled in price, far surpassing inflation. There are even some so-called "high-end" Chinese tubas now that are pretty much in the same price range as some Western-made tubas, which I never thought I'd seeDonn wrote: And another thing, while I'm ranting about the good things brought to us by the global economy, and returning to some extent to the topic -- yeah, things are cheaper. Things like tubas.
But it is very obvious that it is the 'middle man' (importer/distributor with thier name on them) that are the ones marking-way-up those Chinese tubas to make them appear high-end/high-quality to appeal to more people. The "W" brand in particular often talked about on here is the one I'm thinking of 
I'm not sure I'd call the modern Conn-Selmer stuff "expensive", especially considering labor costs, parts/materials costs, and how they compare price-wise with expensive/very-expensive German/Swiss/Japanese tubas.bloke wrote:
The cheapest tubas are still - usually - cheap. Currently-manufactured American expensive tubas are - again - resembling the cheapest tubas more-and-more.
Accusations of "thin" are far more properly-assigned to American sousaphones (as an example) than any other...and though "thin" and "cheap" are not synonyms (as "thin" can also be related to manufacturing elegance), "thin" isn't a particularly good idea - in my view - for outdoor-use brass instruments.
Even you stated here that some of the more expensive Chinese tubas are still more expensive comparatively to the old American tubas, even accounting for inflation. Add to the fact that the vintage American tubas and sousas were handmade and were built to a higher standard decades ago than they are now.
You also stated here that even the most expensive tubas are still relatively cheap compared to some high-end woodwinds and strings, so......
