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My teacher said if I could get a Yamaha YFB 822 made from German brass, I'd have something great. Said the Japanese design was superior but the metal was pretty bad. Recently, a repair artist told me the brass coming out of china is prone to oxidization due to a problem with the copper or the zinc. Any further comments on this topic?

Are you talking about a raw brass horn? If it is lacquered or silver plated, how can brass oxidize? And if you mean a raw brass horn and it oxidizees, the resulting patina protects the horn. Whether the brass is from Germany, Japan, China, the moon, etc., raw brass will oxidize unless you keep polishing it...

With all due respect, perhaps the teacher had a different, valid point that was misinterpreted and misreported to TubeNet.

zhengquantuba wrote:My teacher said if I could get a Yamaha YFB 822 made from German brass, I'd have something great.?

Sure, the German Brass are great.



In all seriousness:
- By "bad brass," could your teacher have been referring to thickness (Willson vs. Alexander)?
- Could the "oxidation" issue be a lacquer issue, in that it wears more quickly (haven't experienced this with the couple Chinese horns I have owned)?

Judging by your signature, you should be teaching this course!

.

My 822 is very well built. Feels as solid as any other tuba, if not more.

bisontuba wrote:Are you talking about a raw brass horn? If it is lacquered or silver plated, how can brass oxidize?

Not to take the premise too seriously, but to this point, note that these finishes are normally applied only to the outside of a brass instrument. The inside is exposed to potentially corrosive conditions and indeed may be seriously damaged, red rot for example.

There is something different about the early Yamaha brass composition, or the treatment (annealing, hardening, etc.) I have seen this on 80's Yamaha tubas - the brass looks very different after de-denting. Someone with more knowledge of this may be able to give a more specific answer; I only know what I have seen firsthand.

zhengquantuba wrote: Recently, a repair artist told me the brass coming out of china is prone to oxidization due to a problem with the copper or the zinc. Any further comments on this topic?

He didn't mention the radiation??

I've heard this too in reference to the inner valve casings. Red rot. May be partially thwarted by good valve oil and cleaning.

Brass is a copper/zinc alloy.

Is it possible that the alloy used in German horns *is* actually a little different than the alloy that Yamaha uses? Or, perhaps to a greater level of consistency and precision? (As a stupid example, maybe German is 70.0001% / 29.9999% and the other is 69.5% / 30.5%?) Who knows what the tolerances(right word?) are, but I can imagine it's not really exact, and that different manufacturers COULD make different alloys of the same brass (not talking about yellow vs gold, etc but literally that the same mix, with different tolerances, is slightly different). I'd imagine this is all beyond human perception, except the "hear the grass grow" kinds of people in the world.

I guess there's also the concept of impurities, maybe one brass is 69% / 29% / 2% something else...?

Now, if someone claimed that *copper* or *zinc* used in Germany is better than that used in another country, that would be wrong. Elements are elements are elements.

My guess is, it would be rash to assume that any two tubas are made from the exact same brass alloy, unless they come from the same production run.

I wouldn't expect significant fractions of any 3rd element - trace impurities, sure, but anything like 1% would I guess have to be on purpose, and hence more expensive. Not that it isn't done - phosphorus or tin for strength, lead for easier milling, etc - but can't imagine there'd be much call for these special properties in tuba bodies.

Certainly, this topic was not meant to be troll-like. My questions were sincere. I do love hearing what tube netters have to say. Truly a wealth of knowledge. If there is weirdness, it is because I lack insite or didn't understand what my teacher was saying.

The Chinese tubas and euphoniums that I have seen all have copper-colored leadpipes. I think that means they are using a more expensive alloy ("rose brass") on the part that tends to rot out most quickly. A German tuba that I bought new almost 30 years ago came with two leadpipes; both of them rotted out in a few years.

Not sure about Yamaha. I know that knuckleheads who tend to march in their football uniforms rather than a band one seem to find great ways to dent Yamaha sousaphones. I'm not sure that I'd fault the horn though.
However, I have experienced a higher-end-non-Jinbao (I won't say which) Chinese horn that, from what I can tell, had uncharacteristically thin brass*. I'm nearly positive this was some kind of one off error. But I managed to bend the various slides so badly out of alignment that they and all the valve casings were warped and frozen... By playing it for 20 minutes and then transferring it by car in its stock hard case for about 10 minutes on the smooth highway. I guess my point is, stuff slips by over there sometimes. I'm not really sure how my issue happened, but with the fact that it did I wouldn't be surprised if someone botched a mixture of the brass, or something like that.

*yes, I've played and loved several Chinese tubas and I mean no disrespect... just a singular bad experience I had.

Art Hovey wrote:The Chinese tubas and euphoniums that I have seen all have copper-colored leadpipes. I think that means they are using a more expensive alloy ("rose brass") on the part that tends to rot out most quickly. A German tuba that I bought new almost 30 years ago came with two leadpipes; both of them rotted out in a few years.

+1

Yet I have a 91-year-old tuba that I'm pretty sure wasn't ever cleaned in it's first 89 years, and it shows no signs of rot or corrosive damage anywhere despite other signs of having led something of an abused and neglected life.

Buy American. Or at least, buy American if it's 90 years old.

(Or maybe also "Buy Czech", since my old Amati also shows no signs of corrosion although it also obviously wasn't gently treated.)

ghmerrill wrote: Buy American. Or at least, buy American if it's 90 years old.

Your signature doesn't match your advice.

Aglenntuba wrote:I guess my point is, stuff slips by over there sometimes. I'm not really sure how my issue happened, but with the fact that it did I wouldn't be surprised if someone botched a mixture of the brass, or something like that.

I remain puzzled about how these kinds of things manage to "slip through" to the customer. Sure, we can blame the Chinese for crappy quality control. But quality control can/should take place at every level -- especially if you know the factory quality control is undependable. Virtually every importer of these instruments says that they "examine" or "play test" every one before they send it out. But I KNOW this isn't true in at least some cases, and this examples appears to illustrate another such case.

I have even asked a vendor EXPLICITLY to examine the instrument I ordered prior to shipping it, was promised that this would happen, and yet the instrument arrived packaged in a way that indicated it had never been looked at since it left the factory. There's really no excuse for this, and the "low cost" of the instruments in question just can't justify this sort of negligence and laziness. It's also a really stupid business practice in several ways.