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I really want to thank The Horn Guys, Steve Ferguson, the good folks at Miraphone, Dan Oberloh, and especially Lee Stofer for taking on this repair at such a busy time of the year. He did a truly phenomenal job. I don't know how he did it, but my 1292 plays better than ever. I always valued the low register on this horn higher than its upper register, but now the whole horn sings, and I'm so happy to have it back.



Back in March, an accident between my car and the tuba caused heavy damage to the bell and lead pipe. Thankfully that was all it was. The following day I called up Dan Oberloh about what I should do. I really wanted to take it to him, but his shop couldn't handle another large project so I kept searching. Dan gave me excellent advice on what to look for in a repair shop, from the tooling to the various methods of performing a job like this. With all this in mind, I started to realized that there wasn't a place in Arizona that I felt comfortable taking my horn to. I bought the horn from The Horn Guys a few years back so I ordered parts with Steve Ferguson. Working with steve and crew on this has been great.

So for several weeks I just had to wait. My school doesn't own any CC tubas, so I picked up F and put together the first three movements of Persichetti no.12 for my juries. Finally comes May, and by then I decided to go to Indiana for ITEC. I had a wonderful time and there I met Lee Sofer. After ITEC We exchanged some emails and finally I knew who would fix my horn.

Today my 1292 arrived two days early and I'm in love again. Thank you to everyone that had a hand in helping through this.



Share your repair stories and pictures of your horn!

Andy

I Kept the bell. Not entirely sure of what I want to do with it yet. Lee suggested converting an old Miraphone sousaphone into a helicon.

Wow! Lee is the MAN!

Share your repair stories and pictures of your horn!

Here's a before/after of my Rudolf Meinl 4/4 CC, which was damaged in a shipping accident. Matt Walters did the excellent work on this tuba.

Here's a before/after of my Rudolf Meinl 4/4 CC, which was damaged in a shipping accident.

I remember reading about that! wow! looks great.

A few years ago, I had a Marzan tuba with a smashed up bell. I have to resize the pictures to post them, but I'll do that tomorrow. It was a detachable-bell tuba, and Chuck McAlexander did the work on the tuba. He did great work as well, plus I got to see his super old-school shop on the west side of Manhattan before he moved out to Brooklyn.

amg123 wrote:I Kept the bell. Not entirely sure of what I want to do with it yet. Lee suggested converting an old Miraphone sousaphone into a helicon.

Looks like it would make a great abstract art "flower" sculpture and/or fountain for the back yard!

Marzan -- smashy smashy Marzan -- all better The previous owner let his son take the tuba with him to Eastman, probably 30 years ago. In the small, cramped tuba room, someone stepped on the bell and smashed it. It stayed that way until I bought it a few years ago.

The repair work was done by Chuck McAlexander.