tubashaman wrote:Your top band and responsible tubas should have the 186, or the king would be a good choice since it is a full size
A lower band would need yahamas or jupiters
STAY away from st petersburgs, they have the worst intonation, they break easily, and they have a bad tone quality, and really only a 3/4 size.
Im a college tuba major and played on that thing for 1.5 years and got my miraphone 1291 and i can hear such a difference
And your quote assumes the second caveat: lack of responsibility. ALL of the players were assigned the same responsibility for taking care of the instruments. There was NO favortism, and NO singling out or special treatment. We probably had a better team ethic than most professional sports teams, or any other athletic team for that matter. And the school had to build a larger trophy case just for the band trophies as a result.
As I said, the school had a reasonable budget to make sure all instruments were of quality and functioned properly, regardless of age of the horn, or age or ability of the player.
Again, the only stratification of position was as a result of your own limitations, and how you dealt with them, and the only rewards were by and for actual superiority of performance, and then by seating positions and "letter" awards. NOT by horn assignments.
Remember, this thread is about the selection, care, maintenance and longetivity of school-owned tubas, not the rewarding of talented and/or hard working students. This system results in the best overall care, and the longest lives for school owned tubas as opposed to any other system of assigning instruments to students.
Now, here's one more item for the mix: the music store in town, until the owner died, was a stable store with a high reputation region wide, and the owner was a top notch tech himself as well as a player. So he had a good working relationship with the director, and as new instruments were needed, they were purchased of consistent quality for a reasonable, if not the "cheapest" price for instruments that any high school or college music program would feel comfortable having in their inventory, including items such as King tubas, Ludwig top line percussion for both concert and field, Selmer contra clarinets in both Eb & BBb, etc. So as the responsibility for providing good quality instruments consistently was assumed and executed properly by the faculty, staff, and the music store, this also eliminated the "I don't want to play THAT horn" situation.