Acquisitions; To What Lengths Did You Go?

Gongadin · Post by **Gongadin** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 12:14 pm

There's been this vintage horn I've had my eye on for about a year and a half now. I found the Seller quite by accident, and for a year and a half I've been trying to get him to pack up the horn and acoutrements and get me a shipping quote. Well...this weekend I dropped my son off at his grandparents for a week-long visit (they live 5.5 hours away from us) and found myself alone, and with the family minivan. On a whim, I drove from Montreal Quebec down to Pennsylvania, picked the horn up and played one song on it, paid the man and turned around and drove all the way back up to the Canadian border to a place that stocks 78rpm recordings and searched for tuba recordings! It was about 8 hours down to PA from Montreal, then another 8 or so back up.....all done at once except for the hour nap I took in the parking lot of a Comfort Inn.

So, my question is; what sort of insane things have you done in order to obtain a horn? Was it worth it?

imperialbari · Post by **imperialbari** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 12:30 pm

If you find it was worth it, then it was so!

I very strongly advocate that we keep our brains as well informed as at all possible, because it sort of does the intelligence work preceding vital decisions.

But deep down, I think we decide such cases with our hearts. Which is the reason, why our hearts tend to stand by such deals, if we have we have had our brains do a proper work in advance.

I have for some time had a not very playable old Brit G bassbone (bad slide). A Westminster from 1960 came up for sale.

As soon as I had bought and paid that one, the ultimative G/D bassbone from 1978 came up for sale.

Now they all 3 are with me. Do I regret buying especially the "superfluous" Westminster?

No way!

Will one of them be sold?

No way!

Klaus

tjs · Post by **tjs** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 12:42 pm

I just drove from Boston to DC (~ 8 hours each way) to try out a horn. I got hooked up with the seller through here and after talking to him for awhile on the phone, I decided I was interested enough to hop in the car. My wife and I sort of made a 2-day mini vacation out of it.

We drove down on a Friday -- stopped at Dillons along the way to "comparison shop." We grabbed dinner with friends that night in DC. The next day I spent a few hours test driving the horn.. I found that this particular instrument suited me more than anything else that I had recently tried, so I bought it!

Considering what a good tuba costs, and how finding one that fits you is such a "personal" decision, I found the whole experience to be completely worth it. The drive wasn't even that bad except for the !@#*$%* traffic in NJ!

Tim

tuba · Post by **tuba** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 1:22 pm

bump!

tjs · Post by **tjs** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 1:38 pm

tuba wrote:This was all bookended by numerous phone calls to the "major" east coast tuba dealers. With the notable exception of Matt Walters, each of them told me to get a piston CC tuba (such as a Yama-York, Nirschl-York, Holton-York, Gronitz, etc.). When I asked "What's so good about those horns?", one guy said something like, "Do you want to practice for the rest of your life, or do you want to make money? If Gene Pokorny, Alan Baer, etc. all use those horns, so should you!" Finally, I asked another "major tuba seller" why all the pros use silver-plated York copies, and he said, "because it's was Arnold Jacobs used". So I asked the first guy, how do people like me who don't have the $$$ to afford a $20,000 York-clone tuba get one?" And he went into a speech about how I don't know what kind of horn I really want.

Well, yes I do, and I found it!

Congrats! I'm glad you finally found what you wanted. I love my Rudy 5/4 CC and wouldn't trade it for anything right now.

As far as your ordeals with music stores, I'm with you there. I'm about to say something that is probably sacrilege, but what the hell.... Having spent a lot of time shopping around for a horn and a mouthpiece, I'm a little sick of the "artist" labeled products. Just because something says its "Jacobs this, or Bobo-that" or whatever doesn't mean squat. It means some dude helped design something that worked for them. If your physical person looks something like theirs, then perhaps you might have a shot of liking what someone else liked, too. I feel like people in our community and others get way too hung-up on this "who-played-what" nonsense. Granted, the upside of all this is that it probably has increased the amount of variety that is available to us.

<grin> End of rant.

Cheers to you for finding what you were looking for!

TubeNet