TubeNet

A thread over in "Off Topic" got me surfing the Brazilian online market Mercado Livre - not exactly equivalent to ebay, but close enough.

http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB- ... de-usa-_JM



He wants about $3K for it, says right out that it is gold plated and not lacquered. I suppose this was done fairly recently as part of a restoration - some Brazilian equivalent of Oberloh who polishes old tubas up to look like new and then adds some frosting, but instead of satin silver he likes gold.

Reading the Q&A section, I gather his shop guy thought the plating was done at the factory. The account is maybe a little garbled -- "... not restored, it has a detail on the bell, in a place that doesn't show, and they told me that by the quality of the work that was done, in all certainty it was done directly by the factory, because there is no difference in the plating of the other parts and that of the bell, ..." I'm not sure what that really meant, but I infer that factory plating is an underlying assumption. He identifies the shop, so they could be contacted by phone. Time zone is an hour east of eastern US and you'd have to be fluent in Portuguese.

Anyway, it's local pickup. Return fare to São Paulo from Memphis would be nearly $2K, but think of the adventure!

I'm willing to bet that the plating is more a matter of translation from Spanish to English and really means 'gold color'.

At best, you'd lose on a technicality - Brazilians speak Portuguese. But no, the term he uses is banhado a ouro, which explicitly means plated, and he repeats for emphasis "NÃO É LAQUEADO, É BANHADO A OURO!" "It isn't lacquered, it's gold plated!"

Personally I have to admit, I am not that crazy about gold plating, but that's just me.

Donn wrote:At best, you'd lose on a technicality - Brazilians speak Portuguese. ....

OK. But.... you've gotta admit that this really smacks of the way the Asians market their stuff.

I guess I don't read enough Asian marketing, don't know what you mean.

bloke wrote:Typically, the more someone tends to insist that they have a "gold plated" tuba, the less likely that it is gold plated.

Looks like a fairly safe bet to me then.

The word "ouro" ("gold") appears in the title, and twice in the text - the statement, repeated as quoted above. The minimum reasonable count would be two - the title, and one in the text, but the I'm inclined to excuse him for the repetition because he clearly knows he's addressing an audience that will see "gold" and think "clueless" + "lacquer". He's ready to have people come over and look at it, without any stated conditions. Basically provides a reference, the repair shop. Don't know what else you could ask?

They can't put anything on the internet if it isn't true............right???

I'd be an easy sell on one of those Olds tubas, probably should have kept my old one, but unfortunately I'm not such a fan of gold plating. Silver is good - to me, looks better than lacquer in the beat up, deteriorated condition that I favor - but I don't recall ever seeing a silver plated Olds instrument?

I have a "Brazilian equivalent"? COOL!

Could be - São Paulo is the 5th largest city in the word, or was not too long ago anyway, and that area to the north has all kinds of brass instrument manufacturing and customization going on. Weril, of course, but also one or two shops that make contrabass and extended range bass saxophones. Undoubtedly lots more, likely including tuba repair and restoration specialists. But if the Nikolas lacquer theory advanced above is correct, it obviously leaves us with no evidence of a gold plate restorer.