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A band colleague forwarded me the above video and asked me, "How long does it take to make a tuba?" Sadly, I have no idea. So, using the above video as a guide, how long does it take to make a tuba? Thanks for your anticipated help.

Some 20 years ago Rudolf Meinl in person told on a meeting I attended, that producing a fully hand made tuba all-in took some 200 to 240 manhours.
For what it is worth today....
Hubert

the elephant wrote:

Thank you for posting this!

Additional thought: I remember, that Rudy's statement then made sense to me in relation to the price of his tubas (now from memory estimated at around 11,000 to 14,000 USD then, some 20 years ago). The number of workman's hours (200 to 240) would represent costs of some 8,000 USD . Together with costs of material, investments in equipment, buildings and the like, and -not to forget- taxes, this would justify a price range like mentioned, I am inclined to assume. I realize that this is a very rough approach, but nevertheless.
Hubert

I bougt a Hagen from Miraphone, and it took approx 6 months to get it to me.

OK, Erik, understandable. Apart from production time this probably has to do with the organisation of work. Mostly tubas of the same type are made with intervals in a few batches a year.
Hubert

hubert wrote:Some 20 years ago Rudolf Meinl in person told on a meeting I attended, that producing a fully hand made tuba all-in took some 200 to 240 manhours.
For what it is worth today....
Hubert

I seem to remember posts from Lee Stofer, saying that Rudolf said the most generic 4/4 BBb rotary tuba he makes would take 380 to 400 hours.

So naturally, anything beyond the basics is going to take more time than that.

The part that seems hard to conceptualize is that for 400 hours, it's not like this is 10 weeks of 40 hours each. It includes a lot of small chunks of time here and there, and plenty of idle time and waiting for various reasons.

That is for a Rudolf Meinl tuba, though, which is completely made by hand, an extremely time consuming process.

Something like a Miraphone, should take far less time to build. Even though there is still a ton of hand work involved, the scale is simply much greater. They make batches at a time. They have parts bins, and maybe they even have a small stock of bells, tubing, etc. on hand and ready to go. Also, more people and just a bigger operation. All of that should mean a faster build, but "faster" is still not "fast".