How much is too much? Used Jupiter 384 3/4

[basslizard]

I recently spent $100 on a very heavily used Jupiter JCB-384 tuba. This was either going to be completely disastrous or brilliant. So far, I think it's the latter. I don't want to spend a ton of money, but I don't mind fixing a few things. I don't want to invest a ton of money in what I think is just a student horn. My husband was already shocked to find a giant tuba case in the living room after it arrived in the mail.

On a good note, it plays. The valves don't seem to leak, and they move freely. The overall pitch is good. It has a small dent in the lead pipe, and a couple of larger dents on the bottom where the dent guards are. The bell looks battered, reshaped, and then a little battered again. The lacquer is half-off, and what remains is heavily scratched. I've covered the cracks in the case with duct tape, and I might fix the wheel that lost it's rubber/plastic. I plan to re-upholster the interior of the case, probably using a nice microfleece with some batting under it.

So far I've given the tuba a thorough bath, polished everything up, put new valve oil and slide grease, and bought a cheap silver-plated mouthpiece online. I have been thinking about removing the remaining lacquer and just polishing the brass up, maybe adding a bit of wax to it. My very first thought was to strip it and then buy some spray lacquer and make it red; although this would look cool for a little while, I've read enough threads to think that I'd probably regret that.

Should I pay to have the dents pulled? Is there anything else anyone would recommend? I am a rank amateur tuba player - I put myself partway through college playing, but haven't played in almost 20 years. I bought this tuba because our little town of less than 900 people started a community band, and I loved playing the school's horn so much that I couldn't resist this bargain tuba. Despite all the ugly exterior, I love playing it. The band director listened to me play it last night at rehearsal and said I definitely got a bargain.

[roweenie]

It's difficult to know what condition it's in without seeing it.

[The Big Ben]

Post pictures, please.

A straight bell and bell stack (the large tubing right below the bell) makes it look a lot better. Make sure none of the dents cause and air leaks.

[basslizard]

bell.jpg

I will get better pictures of the big dents when I get home from work. I don't think there aren't any air leaks in any of the old repairs or dents, but I can't be absolutely certain. I am also trying not to post giant pictures, but I can certainly post better dent pictures, or close ups of anything as needed.

[basslizard]

Once I figured out how to resize the pictures, I hit the board limit for picture posting. Oops. I guess I will figure this out down the road. I will try deleting some previous pictures, if that's possible.

[edsel585960]

Nice find and a good price. It's hard to get hurt for 100 bucks. I've cleans up several of these. The areas that are turning red will polish up with Wright's brass polish. I bought a basic set of dent balls and magnets on Amazon for less than 75$ if you want to try your hand at dent removal. Kind of hard to get hurt with a horn that cheap. Enjoy playing it!!

[basslizard]

Nice find and a good price. It's hard to get hurt for 100 bucks. I've cleans up several of these. The areas that are turning red will polish up with Wright's brass polish. I bought a basic set of dent balls and magnets on Amazon for less than 75$ if you want to try your hand at dent removal. Kind of hard to get hurt with a horn that cheap. Enjoy playing it!!

Thanks, I agree, it's hard to go wrong at the price I paid. I've seen people put $2000 or more into re-plate or lacquer, but I'm not really wanting to spend that kind of money on this horn. I might try the magnet set.

[edsel585960]

Here are the dent balls and magnets I bought. They work well. There are some good videos on You Tube regarding dent removal you should watch before trying. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IT ... UTF8&psc=1" target="_blank" target="_blank" target="_blank Go slow if you try it. It is possible to fold the metal over itself. These are strong magnets! https://www.amazon.com/Repair-Piece-Mag ... TWMYXYXS4P" target="_blank" target="_blank https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Magnets- ... J14FW91G5M" target="_blank

[basslizard]

Before I buy a set of magnets, I will get a quote from the 'local' music store. They do some repair work. They did a good job pinning my oboe after my daughter dropped it, creating two long cracks in the upper register, and they've done some repair work on my son's trombone (broken spit valve), but I don't know how good their brass guy is. I went there first when I was looking for a tuba, thought I'd rent something for the summer since they do band rentals for short or long term, but they don't carry tubas at all. The local shop is only 80 miles. I am about 7 hours from Denver, 7 hours to Minneapolis.

This is the first tuba I've ever been able to call my own; through high school and university, I borrowed a horn from the school. I'm tickled over how well this ugly old horn plays, especially when I search for like tubas on ebay, they all seem to go between $500-1000. I'm fixing this tuba up for me, rather than for a resale value.

[basslizard]

Thank you so much for the excellent advice. Now I just need to decide when I want to part with it to have the work done. I can borrow a tuba in the interim from the local high school for summer city band.

[basslizard]

Took it to the shop nearest me. He doesn't want to pull the dents. He'll round the bell out, clean and re-felt the valves. I asked about chemical cleaning, and he said I did a great job with the dish soap bath and snake. I may still insist on the chemical cleaning. I also found a missing brace. I asked him to look for leaks; just because I didn't find one doesn't mean there aren't any.

I may go ahead and get the dent magnet set previously mentioned.

[basslizard]

Took it to the shop nearest me. He doesn't want to pull the dents. He'll round the bell out, clean and re-felt the valves. I asked about chemical cleaning, and he said I did a great job with the dish soap bath and snake. I may still insist on the chemical cleaning. I also found a missing brace. I asked him to look for leaks; just because I didn't find one doesn't mean there aren't any.

I may go ahead and get the dent magnet set previously mentioned.

[roweenie]

Do NOT use dent magnets unless you have years of experience doing dent work. Dent magnets can easily destroy a tuba. Take it to a better technician. Your guys sounds like he does not want to work on tubas. Find a guy who like to work on tubas. People tend to avoid tubas because they are physically hard to work on, eat up time that is not on the clock (if they are honest about billing) and can be money losers if they do not have a bench physically set up to work on large brass instruments. Your guy's idea of a clean horn is bad enough and his reticence to do dent work say that he is neither set up for large brass work nor particularly experienced with it. Most techs are small brass and woodwind guys. I would look around to see if you can find a shop where tuba work is welcomed.

You did not do "well enough" with soap and water. He either does not have tanks large enough to fully immerse tubas or he does not do a lot of chem cleanings. You need something acidic enough to eat off all lime/scale etc from inside the leadpipe as well as in other areas, you need something that will clean staining/oils/grease from the metal surface, too. In the old days you would scrub out the horn with very soapy water, rinse, fully immerse it and all its parts in muriatic acid at a mild to medium solution, rinse, then fully immerse it and all its parts in chromic acid (bright dip), rinse, and then immerse everything in a base solution to deactivate any acids that were not fully rinsed out. Then a final vigorous scrubbing in very soapy water and a good rinse and air dry. THAT is a chemical cleaning. A cleaning using an ultrasonic system is different from that, is not as effective, but is also less damaging, from what I hear. (My store never owned an ultrasonic cleaner.) Anyway, a home soap-ane-water cleaning cannot really get a used horn "clean" it can just get most of the loose build up (and hopefully the germs attached to that gunk) out of the horn.

I would have only ever recommended a chem clean, but I would have explained why it was needed, and then would have give them the open door needed to decline the service.

Dent magnets are super powerful to the point that you can be very badly injured (think emergency room) if you fail to use them properly. Also, this extreme power can leave lots and lots of ridges or flat lines all over your tuba. It takes a lot of practice to do anything with them that is not damaging.

That being said, a horn that cost you only a hundred bucks is the perfect horn to learn on. But I would not do that until you have a nicer horn to play.

Your tech's only wanting to do the bell flare is because that is the easiest part to de-dent. There are three types of dent jobs you can do: all dents, accessible dents, and magnet work.

All dents would traditionally require disassembly of the horn with a torch so you can get everything. This costs a lot and most techs who do not specialize in large instrument major work will have trouble doing this work and having the final product look anything like what it should after all that time, labor and expense. Accessible dent work is exactly that: anything that can be reached with normal dent rods/balls or rollers. This is unable to get to dents in the inner tubing unless it is in the run up to a slide leg. However, there is no disassembly, so it is usually fairly quick and inexpensive. Magnetic dent work can get most of the stuff that a disassembly job can get, but not all of it. It requires no disassembly either, so it is also fast and cheap, but it can look pretty bad, and if a novice tries it at home they might have success, or they might booger up the horn so that a tech cannot fix it. And I cannot emphasize the risk of a severe pinching incident or a broken finger. I have decades of experience and my dent work is usually very good in most cases. I use magnets on my horns all the time. Regularly. And I will occasionally hurt myself badly enough to have to go the local clinic to have some crushed skin looked at and get pain meds.

You can do this, but you need to be fully aware of what the potentialities are for you and the horn, and the expense.

Lastly, if you smack these neodymium magnets into anything the outer shell will shatter and you will have tiny metal splinter all over that are hard as hell to clean off the magnet, and they will deeply gouge the surface of the brass if they get between the magnet and the horn. Also, once the surface is broken, the magnets are made of pressed powder, so they start to degrade. They are not cheap, either. Nor are the very large steel balls needed to do this. And the balls need to be spheres and not "dent balls" (which are normally ovalized like a football, with a hole drilled longitudinally so they can be attached to a dent tool). Anything other than spheres without a hole will cause more problems then they are worth.

Message me specifically where you live (not an address, just a town) and I will search for a good tuba shop that will know what to do and who will not fob you off like your guy did in two specific ways. The issue is finding experience, tooling, willingness, and price where you do not have to drive all over the US for this. It might not work out and you will have to use your local guy, who may be a genius, but who obviously does not want to do much work to large horns of low value. Everyone works the way that suits them best. I refuse to work on a lot of stuff, too. But basic dent work and a chem clean? Come on... Certainly there must be an alternative for you out there. I hope. HAHAHA!!! Best of luck. If you were near to me I would do some of the work for free just because you think your old clunker is so cool. I like to fix up beaters much more than I like to do high-end work, even though my high-end work is usually very good. But alas, you are like ten million miles from my shop.

Here is some of the stuff I do to beater tubas. This is a super-long thread about two of my horns (my main horn for my orchestra job and an old Eb tuba that I really liked but that I did not use for much). It has proven to be interesting to some here, though most are not interested in this stuff. I have gone back and updated some of it and added some explanatory text. If you are interested please give it a read. If not, no harm, no foul. Cheers!

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=50669

+1

Solid and sage advice.

[basslizard]

Thanks for the link. I've been stalking all the rebuild threads because they're fun. I think you are confirming my first take on watching a YouTube video of someone pulling dents with a ball and magnet, which was, "Holy cow, I could hurt myself with that!" Which is kind of funny, because I used to frequently have tuba related injuries, most commonly a broken toe from dropping the case on my foot. Those old hard cases with the sharp 90 degree corners on them are not meant for birkenstock sandals.

I will message you with my location. The brass guy at my local shop said he'd have to disassemble the tuba to pull any dents except the bell, and I'm guessing you are right that he doesn't have a big enough tub for a chem clean. I was really looking forward to the chem clean. I am letting him do whatever he's comfortable doing for now, but it's not going to be much. They don't carry tubas at that shop. He also recommended I get a new case because the hinges on the hard case are not in the best shape. I was figuring I'd just keep duct taping the problem areas on the case for now. I used to carry gaffers tape for band travel - I'd just wrap it around a couple of times to make sure no case opened up.