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Odd little anecdote with no real point except it reminds me to appreciate easy access to quality information on TubeNet.

1st community band rehearsal last night, and there was a new gal who brought her tiny tuba.
She borrowed one of the school horns, because she dislikes how her own horn plays. She bought it 4 years ago at a (now defunct, but at the time well-reputed) local music store, and selected it because it was affordable. She says that she assumed the fault was hers, but that she could never get it to sound right.
I took a look after rehearsal.
It's an old (1950s, I think she said), 3/4 Eb 3-valved Amati with decent appearance, but blown-out valves (plating is long gone). It tunes closer to D than Eb and it is out-of-tune with itself, with terribly inconsistent back-pressure up the scale.
She can only play a BBb horn and she paid $700 for it. I know the shop where she bought it, and am stunned that they would have conducted this transaction.
There's no happy ending: She can't afford car repairs, never mind a do-over on a different horn, and even if she could afford just a valve-job, there's no guarantee the horn would be a good one. She wouldn't play Eb, anyway, and it wouldn't carry enough value to flip it for another horn.
Shame on the sales person, and caveat emptor.

Maybe THAT's why the store went out of business

I "bought" a new 3+1 EEb tuba four and a half years ago, paid in full. Funny thing is, the tuba has yet to arrive.

You know, I thought about Big Bottom Brass the other day, and wondered if anything *actually* ended up happening. Guess I got my answer.

Law suit or not, you can't bleed a turnip.

What's the deal with the Eb / BBb business...

Condition aside, did nobody know the key of the thing??

Did she not know it was an Eb when she bought it?

Did the store not know the difference between Eb and BBb? Or was it that they knowingly sold her some POS tuba they knew was an Eb but said was a BBb?

Crazy!

The way I read the story, she sure didn't know it was Eb.

When I've gone into local music stores, "some guy" is there. He knows a little about guitars, drums, clarinets, amplifiers, tambourines, nose flutes, etc. He might not be up for a conversation about tuba keys. The advantage of buying in the store is that you can try stuff and make sure what you're getting is something like what you need. I don't want to say this place really lived up to expectations, but if she went in as an adult player and walked out with that tuba, then in my opinion both sides fell a little short.

$700 doesn't sound like a horrible deal if it were in okay playing condition.

At those sorts of stores, tubas are big shiny things, and they certainly don't count on selling many of them. It's mostly just for looks.

Buying/selling tubas can be pretty scary. Luckily I've been very successful with it, but only because I always do a lot of research. Nowadays I would only buy from a handful of dealers. As far as private transactions, I would only buy a professionally used instrument.

Actually, I probably will play what I'm playing now for the rest of my life, so. . .

If I were playing an Eb tuba like a Bb tuba, I'm confident I wouldn't like the way it plays either.