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Yeah. One of my fellow tuba players borrowed my sousaphone because his was out of commission, and I talked to him about getting it in before the truckload of school instruments shows up, but after hearing how it is, I'm not sure anyone's going to want to get started on that mess anyway. It's a nice sounding Holton and suits him pretty well, but a lot of backyard repairs, including a patched bell collar that doesn't quite work? Ugh!

That's why I do most repairs myself. I remember 2 years ago during the summer I took the 20J in because the thumb ring came off. Took 2 months to get back. Soldering gets done at home now. Ain't rocket science.

And some shops are just better than others about getting stuff done. It isn't a small matter. I wouldn't be surprised if the ability to organize and apply limited manpower and space to get a whole lot of work done in a timely manner, is the number one factor in successful operation of a musical instrument repair business, but we have had some terrible examples around here and some of them remain somewhere near the top of the list. Part of it is that some people could go in and be not only likeable, but also somewhat prominent musicians, and they would hang out in the shop and kind of make sure that their job was getting done. The guy could do great work, but according to some accounts you had to be there looking over his shoulder. Etc. There are lots of stories in the big city.

I am fortunate inasmuch that I do VERY LITTLE work for local schools. The Evansville/Vanderburgh County School Corporation has it's own repair department that does a good job of keeping up with their stuff. There is a large retailer that handles repairs for Warrick County (where I am). I do some walk-in stuff and an occasional emergency repair but by-and-large my work comes from far-flung places and I keep things pretty well caught up. Of course... I always have a few projects of my own but I work on them as time allows and I want to.

I spent the day today preparing to remove an old wooden beam under the old part of my house. It will be replaced with a nice steel beam In a week or so.

Sure am glad to be retired and to not have to worry much about paying the bills!

ValveSlide wrote:So, it's summer and schools are having instruments repaired and maintained. We have hundreds and hundreds of instruments in for repair right now with July and August return timelines.

I have 28 sousaphones from one university alone.

Turn around time for your fubar tuba may take awhile.

That's A LOT of sousaphones!!

ValveSlide wrote:I imagine there were a couple factors in play in that two month return time. Polite, respectful customers seem to get their stuff quicker. Not sure why...

Well, I did tell them to take their time. As Long as I had it back for Oktoberfest. It's a small shop and they do ALOT of repairs for Lee County School System ( which is huge).

Just had a few box trucks dropped off at my shop these past few weeks. Oh how we love band season.

I should have kept up with musical instrument repair in Kolig...