How to ship tuba without hard case?

[HashBrownJM]

So, I'm selling my tuba in the 'For Sale by Owner' section of the forums. (Thanks, TubeNet!)

Seller is in Los Angeles, I'm in Austin. Hadn't considered shipping, as I locally picked up the tuba when I bought it. (Seller was in Houston.)

I have a gig bag, no hard case. Is it feasible to buffer it enough in a gig bag so it doesn't get damaged in transit, if being shipped via a ground service? Or is it a straight no-go?

Asking before I start concocting weird ways to get it out that'll surely fail and have the horn get damaged.

Other option (potentially) is to drive halfway and meet somewhere right on the west border of Texas. Ends up being a two-day trip for me, but at least I can guarantee safety of the horn.

Thanks for your help!

[bisontuba]

Drive

[bort]

Drive, 100%. See if the seller will pitch in for gas $ as well. I wouldn't try to get more than $200 for travel costs, but that's up to you to decide.

[Tom]

Actually, it is best to NOT ship a tuba in virtually any hard case.

I'm guilty of having shipping three different tubas in hard cases in the past. One of those tubas was damaged in a very difficult to repair way and it was in an Anvil case. The other two came through OK, but I consider myself lucky and don't consider those results necessarily guaranteed or repeatable.

Then I observed and ultimately learned something on subsequent purchases through some of the major brass retailers: they don't ship instruments to customers in hard cases. They pack the instrument for shipping and then send any cases separately. I even asked one major-and-often-talked-about-here shop about it and was sold plainly "hard cases don't make for good packing material or shipping containers."

That said, the best option for safe transport of an instrument is to drive. No question about it.

[edsel585960]

Drive is your best bet. I've had good luck using a hard case on Greyhound but it's a crapshoot once it's out of your possession.

[swillafew]

I received two horns via shipping in the last few years. One was Greyhound, horn was fabulously wrapped by the seller. Box arrived in pristine condition. Horn #2 arrived from Fedex. Box was toast, horn was fine. Famous Ebay dealer was the seller, he was pretty good with the wrap too.

I have a horn on the market myself, and have declined to ship it. I know it shrinks the pool of buyers but I'm ok with that.

[Beans&Tuba]

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=31654" target="_blank" target="_blank
Somebody is getting a great tuba . I love mine !

[Tubanomicon]

How much did you sell the tuba for? What make and model is it? Does the buyer have a preference, and are they willing to pay for it?

Short of hand-delivering the tuba, shipping in a hard case via ground service would be best. But you could possibly do a good enough job protecting the tuba in a gig bag. Using Greyhound, you could wrap the tuba up with bubble wrap so there's ABSOLUTELY NO movement inside of the bag. Needless to say, you need to get a lot of bubble wrap to accomplish this; it's also a good idea to protect the wrapped tuba against the actual bag using materials like Styrofoam, newspaper padding, etc. Before you wrap up the tuba, I would also place a children's ball inside of the bell to absorb any bumps along the way to LA.

[Art Hovey]

http://www.galvanizedjazz.com/tuba/BigConn.html

http://galvanizedjazz.com/tuba/4sale/KingCrate.html

[Dubby]

I'll chime in with the rest to say "drive" as that's what I did when I sold a tuba and drove from Sioux Falls to Kansas to meet someone from Texas.

Although when I bought a tuba before that from Tabor on the east coast he shipped it via Greyhound. No case, no gig bag, just a big box with lots and lots of packing foam and bubble wrap.

[TUbajohn20J]

Tuba Exchange shipped my Willson to me in a hard case inside of a huge box with nothing but packing peanuts inside and it was fine. I ship horns without the case. First I wrap it in bubble wrap, and have used everything from packing peanuts, newspaper balled up, and a layer of unopened rolls of paper towels to suspend the tuba in the box. Good results every time.

[HashBrownJM]

Tuba Exchange shipped my Willson to me in a hard case inside of a huge box with nothing but packing peanuts inside and it was fine. I ship horns without the case. First I wrap it in bubble wrap, and have used everything from packing peanuts, newspaper balled up, and a layer of unopened rolls of paper towels to suspend the tuba in the box. Good results every time.

How did you like the Willson?

[royjohn]

Yes, better to drive, but...

Greyhound seems the best easy option, but evidently there is little to no insurance available from Greyhound SHOULD there be a problem. You might be able to get independent insurance somehow. When I shipped a very large BBb Besson from Tennessee to New England, I made contact with the local recycler and got a bunch of various thicknesses and types of styrofoam. I cut the styrofoam to fit the tuba and sandwiched it in the styrofoam and took a roll of the wide plastic wrap that Walmart uses on its boxes on pallets and wrapped the styrofoam until the tuba couldn't move inside the styrofoam sandwich. Then I got two of the largest boxes available at Uhaul and put them together to make a large box which the styrofoam cube would fit into. I used various pieces of cardboard laminated together and more styrofoam to keep the cube from shifting around in the box. I don't think I used a ball inside the bell, but I do think this is a good idea if you can fit it inside the styrofoam sandwich.

The other shipper with whom I don't have any experience which might work is Amtrak, but I guess they are not available everywhere. If you use Greyhound, you should make sure that the shipping path does not include small stations where the box might spend time laying around on the platform unattended where it might be stolen. If it goes through larger stations where personnel are around and the baggage gets loaded promptly, this down time is less likely to happen.

So drive or send it securely packed and cross your fingers. The other option would be to try to find someone (or several someones) in the tube network who would take it along with them...
good luck,
royjohn

[TUbajohn20J]

Tuba Exchange shipped my Willson to me in a hard case inside of a huge box with nothing but packing peanuts inside and it was fine. I ship horns without the case. First I wrap it in bubble wrap, and have used everything from packing peanuts, newspaper balled up, and a layer of unopened rolls of paper towels to suspend the tuba in the box. Good results every time.

How did you like the Willson?

I loved that horn! I recently sold it because I couldn't justify having an expensive horn sitting around not being played much. If I was playing full time still I would have kept it for sure.

[Norm Pearson]

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=31654" target="_blank" target="_blank
Somebody is getting a great tuba . I love mine !

Links to the photos are fixed.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=31654" target="_blank"

I have shipped four tubas packed this way and had no problems.
It's better to ship gig bags or hard cases separate from the horn: I shipped the gig bags in their own boxes.
DON'T SKIMP ON THE PACKING MATERIALS!
It will cost $25-$100 for the packing materials. However, when shipping a multi thousand dollar instrument it is a small price to pay for some peace of mind knowing that the tuba has a fighting chance against the barbarians transporting it from point A to B!

Of course anything can happen no matter how well something is packed: https://www.thestrad.com/airline-smashe ... 01.article" target="_blank"

Norm Pearson