Help me learn about my new Tuba (Musica 3/4 4v rotary)

[thomasafine]

Hi,
After almost 30 years away from the tuba (since college), I'm getting back into it. I rented an Anthem-2000 for a while, but decided it would be worth owning my own tuba for the first time ever. As luck would have it a tuba that looked to be pretty good popped up on CL under $2K. It's got some wear, but all the moving parts moved and it seemed to play better than the Anthem so I bought it. After practicing for one evening, I'm sure it's a better instrument. I've read a bit about it here, and looked at a lot of similar pictures, but I was hoping the experts here might be able to tell me about more about my purchase.

It's labelled "Musica / Steyr - Austria" on the bell. There's no stamp on the lead pipe that some others have noted, though that part is badly warn and may have been repaired. To my eye, it looks more like a current model Ceverny 783 than anything else, although this is clearly not a very new instrument.

Here's a dropbox folder with a couple of photos. I'll try to add more this evening. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/m2ooqum244t4 ... P4eQa?dl=0

If anyone can tell me anything about this Tuba, maintenance issues, care and feeding, anything at all I'd appreciate it. (For starters, I've never owned a rotary, and also it needs a good internal cleaning).

And last, I only just joined TubeNet but I've read up quite a bit recently so thanks to everybody for the combined wisdom here.

tom

[PMeuph]

I could write a whole bunch of words, but I'm a visual learner.

I would watch this series to help you with maintenance:




Congrats on your horn, it looks like a great find!

[Heavy_Metal]

Welcome back to the tuba! And welcome to TubeNet.

I'd say your horn does look like Cerveny built it. So it should play quite well. There are others on here who could confirm or deny this, but that's how it looks to me.

So where are you playing?

[thomasafine]

Right now I'm in a spring parent-teacher band associated with my son's school district (Belmont, MA). My wife actually surprised me by renting a tuba for me so I could do it. And then after that... I'm just going to be looking around for opportunities at the community/very amateur level. I bought the Tuba so that I could become a better player, and be opportunistic about finding ways to perform ("have tuba, will travel").
If anyone knows of any opportunities in the Boston area I'd love to hear about them.

[TheAltoHornGuy]

It was made by V.F.Cerveny & Sons, Musica Steyr is closely associated with Cerveny, Lidl and Amati. Amati being the lowest, then intermediate was Lidl and then Cerveny which also used stencil names such as Conn International (with a globe and marching bandsmen around it as a logo) and 'apparently' Austrian, Musica Steyr brand.