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I recently acquired an old, beat up 186 for a low price. It was missing a bell and needed some serious work. The valve linkage was partially replaced with dubro and the bottom bow was severely dented.
I sent the tuba to Dan Schultz and he worked his magic on it.

Here are the before pictures:

http://www.streamload.com/tubaman5150/before

And the after pictures:

http://www.streamload.com/tubaman5150/after

Damn fine work, Dan.
I can't wait to play it.

Looks very nice.

Was there any reason you opted to go for a one piece bell? It looked like the horn originally was a detachable bell setup.

I think the bell is one of his Chinese made replacements. Its 17 1/2 inches and this the Yamaha bell flairs are slightly larger.

I went with the one piece bell because it was cheaper. The original bell was discarded and to cut a replacement would be much more expensive.

tofu wrote:Looks very nice.

Was there any reason you opted to go for a one piece bell? It looked like the horn originally was a detachable bell setup.

I'll chime in here.

In this particular case, the front-facing bell had already been discarded. I could have built a new upright bell (as I just did for another fellow) but to do so would have required either making a new bell tenon or buying a genuine one from Mirafone. To my knowledge, Mirafone does not make replacement bells for either the front or upright versions. .. but they do still make the detachable collar assembly. Also, to build an upright detachable bell requires that a complete bell be cut down to about 11". The customer would still has to pay for the entire bell. In this particular case, the customer saved several bucks by going with the complete bell replacement. Yes... this bell is of Chinese origin... another HUGE savings over using a genuine Mirafone bell!

TubaTinker wrote:Yes... this bell is of Chinese origin... another HUGE savings over using a genuine Mirafone bell!

An actual possible use for some of those asian eBay tubas... throw the horn away, but keep the bell!

BTW: Nice looking job, Dan!

Here are some pics of the finished product.

http://www.streamload.com/tubaman5150/finish

Another great job Dan, If some of these guys only new how many of there so called Western made Tubas are made in China or some of the parts , They would not knock the Instruments that say up front , made in China,

Great looking horn, Dan, but every time I scan down the topics, I'd swear this one reads "186 Insurrection"