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Going through a King 1140. It was an old school horn. Sounded very stuffy and lower notes were next unplayable. Stuck cleaning snake up leadpipe and met resistance and could see something with flashlight. After some work pulled a small plastic handled screwdriver out of pipe. Needless to say it plays much better now. What are some of the things you have found when working on horns?

Dead mouse in a 20K sousa, wads of paper in my Kaiser...

I seem to have misplaced my gun...

Earlier thread on this topic..................

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In our school there was a tennis ball shoved down the bell, it was at such an angle that we couldn't see it in the bow and so tight that we couldn't get it out. Initially we tried to use a crooked paper clip on a string to maybe catch on whatever it was (we didn't know at the time). We even tried to use shop air in our school to try to get it out, but the air went through the gaps between the ball and the bell. We even tried to put something else inside the bell to increase the pressure, but it ended up being 2 weeks in a repair shop, all because someone thought it was funny to put a tennis ball down our tuba (for a few seconds my band director and I looked at each other while trying to get the ball out and we just cracked up)

One time with my first school tuba I was in 5th grade or something and there was very audibly water in the slide and being my first year playing my conductor stopped the band and told me to take out the first slide and showed me where, I pull it out and dump it on the ground to see 5 dead flies fall out. Ahh the memories...

I found a few mouthpieces in a old horn at a local college.

a wad of bubble wrap way down the bell when a salesman handed me a tuba to test in his shop. Yup, it was stuffy.

My Conn 48K Jumbo sousaphone was totally black with soot and the bottom bow had been almost completely flattened when I acquired the long-neglected horn in 2010.

Lee Stofer, who did a magnificent job restoring the Jumbo, showed me what he found in the horn:

- a Chicago-area high school newsletter dated April 1, 1951
- several Wrigley's gum wrappers with the old logo of the 1950's

As a reference, the horn was originally built in 1930.

Tucker Jolly told me a story about how he bought an older York Eb. It sounded great, but was really stuffy. Then one day, he just blew really hard and it got better. He spun the tuba and a red bouncy ball came out.

To this day, one of the sousas at my old high school has a drum stick stuck in one of the bows.... Stupid percussionists.

Years ago: a package "Old Mac" tobacco.
Hubert

Ferree's sells a screen that can be put in the bell throat of a tuba or sousaphone. Don't know what it does to the sound but, in an environment where things might be thrown into a tuba, it might not matter.

The yearly Rhododendron Festival Parade in Port Townsend, WA. was last weekend. The parade marches down the main street of town (Water Street) and there used to be a notorious bar named the Town Tavern which was always full of near-do-wells. My friend was playing the Sousie in the Chimacum HS Band and marked time right in front of the door of the Town Tavern. Someone came out and dumped a whole pitcher of beer into the bell. My friend was 16 at the time but he wasn't stupid so didn't attempt to drink any of the beer or save it for later. He bent at the waist and touched the edge of the bell on the pavement and all of the beer came rushing out. Some of it splashed on his white marching pants and marching shoes which stained them and his mother was quite upset. The band director was one of those old school guys who had seen and done everything and played in a pops quartet every Friday and Saturday night all over the place so nothing phased him and he had a good belly laugh over it, sent the wool pants to his personal cleaners and carried on...

In high school, I stuffed my lunch into my sousaphone, so I would not have to carry it. As we were warming up, I panicked - my horn wouldn't work. One of my other tuba players looked down the bell and then asked my what I did with my lunch. Took it out - problem solved.

I found an old Conn 20j and a Besson 225 at a local garage sale for cheap. Evidently, they hadn't been used in years and probably just sat in a garage or attic somewhere, so I threw them in a warm bath. A bunch of leaves flew out of the Besson after I dumped them out with the water. The Conn 20j was worse. Of course, it had leaves too, but in the tuba was some sort of pillow case or old shirt or something. It was wet and I wasn't about to unfold it to figure out what it was. With the fabric came some of those old air freshener packets. If you saw it when it all fell out you would think it was disgusting!

A friend found a 16 pound shotputt in a sousaphone he had been playing for several weeks in high school.

I bought a beautiful satin silver Eb Holton Sousa once that was in nice shape & very cheap. The story was that it had been sitting in a music store since the 1950s and never sold, then an attic. It was pretty but wouldn't play at all.

I decided to take out a small dent & found a 1950s Dr. Pepper bottle stuck firmly inside.

Tabor wrote:I bought a beautiful satin silver Eb Holton Sousa once that was in nice shape & very cheap. The story was that it had been sitting in a music store since the 1950s and never sold, then an attic. It was pretty but wouldn't play at all.

I decided to take out a small dent & found a 1950s Dr. Pepper bottle stuck firmly inside.

So you got a collectable bottle included in the price of the horn.

Roger Lewis wrote:A friend found a 16 pound shotputt in a sousaphone he had been playing for several weeks in high school.

Talk about dent balls!

-Ace

Alan Baer purchased a used YFB-621s earlier this spring and said it was playing stuffy at sh*t! He took off the bottom bow and found the little culprit!

Not mine, but a friend had a herald trumpet that she'd been playing in public (not in a context where you'd expect herald trumpets at all, but that's another story), and needed something fixed. The repairman found a cleaning brush within.

I once bought a Conn 40K out of the local Classifieds. It had been hanging in a shed for years. I sent it down to Harvey and he contacted me to let me know that the horn played 100% better after he flushed the dead bird out.