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What are some things that you have gotten stuck in your tuba?


I have had a matchbox car and a Tennis ball stuck, of course this was before I owned my own horns.

I was investigating why the low 'D' was unresponsive on a Miraphone 183 that I owned a couple of years ago and found a 1985 TubaChristmas button stuck in the back bow ferrule. It was just hanging there like a stovepipe damper. Once I removed the button... the darned horn was still stuffy in the lower range. Sold it!

A metal Transformer (whichever one was the Ferrari), and pencils....

My little brothers were jerkheads.....

That was about 20 years ago though....all is forgiven.

But I wish I had that Transformer back....

GO AUTOBOTS!!!!

Each of my three children, when they were infants, crawled into the bell of one of my tubas. Only one of them got stuck somehow. The screaming made it worse. That one now plays horn. The other two play tuba and euphonium.

In high school, an unexploced cherry bomb after a parade. Not stuck but interesting anyway.

A marching band uniform. Nobody knew why the sousa was so stuffy/ couldn't play, until the repairman marched angrily into the room with a uniform in his hand.

I have apparently had some idiots before me at my high school. I have pulled moldy music out a souzaphone and a "beanie baby" from a big old holton with a screw on front facing bell. The music was particularly special because I was giving the tuba a bath and the paper started to break up in the water.

bloke wrote:Quite a few years ago, I got my head stuck in a sousaphone bell. We tried a hair dryer, ice, grease, a block-and-tackle...Nothing worked. My band director told me that if I could not get it off, I was going to have to pay for it! Finally, a student of Eric von Steric (the World's Loudest Tuba Player) called his teacher and asked him if he would be willing to help. We positioned the sousaphone bell back on the sousaphone and Prof. von Steric (with the proper mouthpiece selected by one of his full-time caddies) BLEW me out of that thing. At that time, I lived in Oklahoma. The sousaphone was facing east.
bloke "I've been in Memphis ever since."

Now THAT is a story!

hey, bloke -- you know Sean doesn't like politics -- so why did you post a picture of the President in this thread?

If I remember correctly, a sousaphone at my high school had a wooden door stop and various candy wrappers in it.

I was just starting tuba in the 8th grade and couldn't tell if the thing played right or not but the old horn stunk and the "King Spin" made a dead bat fall out.
I had my tuba stopped up pretty much by three boxes of pop corn a couple of cute majorettes wanted to toss down there and recover after the parade.

USC vs. Cal game, at Berkeley. We marched pregame out backwards (sousaphones were on the field first), and once we reached mid-field, the Cal fan section (including folks on Tightwad Hill using Hogan Thunkers) starting raining down upon us with everything imaginable (fruit, vegetables, rotten eggs, etc.).

After getting BEANED in the head with an orange - and I do mean BEANED (you should've heard the Cal fan section go nuts) - I ended up with an exploded orange in my bell. I thought the thing had just bounced off the bell, but after playing most of the first quarter feeling a little "backed up", I rolled the horn around and the orange came plopping out.

Ah yes, Cal...

...D

I was using a dent eraser, and when the ball would not travel far enough, I figured out that there was blockage, but didn't have a clue as to what it was. I tried everything over several days. Finally I used some lead weights inserted through the tuning slide port to hammer out the wedged valve oil bottle like in the picture. I had been told by the previous owner that the horn had not been played since the 1950s.

When I went back to college, after time in the Army, I lived on campus with my wife and my young daughter. My daughter often stuck her dolls inside my tuba, which was embarrassing during rehearsals at school and for some of the outside gigs I had!

My Conn ex-"US" 26K was a bit stuffy when I first got it; I just figured it was because it hadn't been played for years, but turns out...

There was a barry sax neck stuck in it. Shined it up, and it fits my "Big B" Buescher just fine! (and you know what they say, "always carry a spare!")

Even now -- this very moment -- correct, in-tune notes are stuck in my horn, and I've been unable to get them to come out no matter WHAT I try. The only thing I've not yet attempted is practicing.
______________________________
Joe Baker, who wouldn't want to be an extremist....

Joe Baker wrote:The only thing I've not yet attempted is practicing

Sometimes you just have to get deperate...