Posted: Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:14 am
I did the same thing about 5 years ago after playing euph since high school. I was in my early 60's when I made the switch. It was a similar situation - we had no tubas in our community band but we had two euph players, the other one a very good player. I bought a used tuba on ebay for under $2000 and started playing at home. After a few weeks practice I brought it to band and have hardly picked up the euph since. I was fortunate that I played bass clef euph so it was just a matter of getting used to reading the lower octave and becoming comfortable with the larger mouthpiece. Our band has since had other tuba players come and go but I've stayed with it and don't want to switch back.