That One School Horn......

[Albertibass]

yes.

some goof ball found it funny to somehow snap the valve stem off of my tuba 2 years ago (not mine the schools). But anywho, i was perty upset, and determined. So i dug out the schools old old conn in the back, (not much is left of it). but it did have a first valve stem, and my tuba didnt. . So yeah after a lengthy operation, Franken-tuba was re-born. yeah thats my story.

[tubatooter1940]

Blubatuba,
My old school sousie started to really stink, so I rotated it until a dead bat fell out. I took the horn home and jumped in the tub with it. We left a permanent green ring in the tub. Oogie!

[Water Music]

I started on a Jupiter Convertible Tuba, with the lead pipe bent out of shape and it falling apart. There were massive dents in it, the valves sounded louder than the Tuba usually and the laquer wear was immense.

The one bad thing is, it was only 5 years old.

[LoyalTubist]

Use Dawn dish detergent and put the tuba in the bathtub. Use warm, not hot water. Let the instrument soak for about three hours in the soapy water, then drain and rinse.

Don't use anything harsh, such as Comet cleanser or Spic 'n' Span. Don't use anything to be used in an automatic dishwasher. Ammonia is ok to use--just don't mix it with bleach (or Dawn). It will take out some of the bad odors.

The dirtiest tuba I ever had was a sousaphone that was issued to me in the Army. Its previous player was a chain cigarette smoker who sometimes smoked as he played. It took about four baths to get that tuba as clean as I wanted it. When I drained that thing, the solution that flowed out of it looked like Hershey's® Chocolate Syrup! And that tuba was only about one year old!

[Dan Schultz]

I wish I had all of that old junk that I used to play on back! ... especially the old beat-up Eb helicon I played in a Mardi-Gras parade in 1966... compliments of Corry Field (Navy) in Pensacola.

[LoyalTubist]

One of the interesting things I learned as a young tubist was how many world class tuba players smoked. I went to the First National Tuba-Euphonium Symposium-Workshop at the University of Illinois in 1975. I was 17. I don't want to use names here, but there were a lot of my tuba playing heroes who smoked then. Most of those have quit... Others died from smoking related illnesses... Not as many people smoke now as they did when I was younger.

[LoyalTubist]

I put this on another post, but when I was in junior high we found a Besson that had a bag of food from the original McDonald's in San Bernardino (this was in 1969). The receipt (handwritten) was dated 1961.

The two hamburgers, two cheeseburgers, and four orders of fries hadn't changed in color. But they were as hard as a rock!

[Rick Denney]

Have you guys ever had a horn like this?

The first tuba I actually owned was a Besson Stratford that my high-school band director gave me because doing so was easier than carrying it out to the dumpster. A tuba must be pretty bad to be worse that battered old King fiberglass sousaphones, which we used even during concert season.

I took it and had the leadpipe revised so I could actually play it. I had to cut several of the slides to provide some hope of playing it in tune, and I had a regular mouthpiece receiver put on it. Oh, and I removed the unmanning device from the bottom.

All that improved an unplayable instrument all the way up to marginal. The Sanders/Cerveny that I bought to replace it was MUCH better.

Rick "who paid his school-horn dues" Denney

[Chuck(G)]

Heaven forfend that anyone should take the battered school horn to a repair shop for at least some minimal work in exchange for getting to use the instrument free of charge for the term!

One thing my father taught me is that if you borrow something, it's just good manners to return the item in better shape than it was when you borrowed it. If it was dirty, return it clean. If it was dull, return it sharpened. If it ran rough, return it tuned up.

I recently loaned out my Alaska mill and big saw to a friend, He returned it with a full can of (premium) gas and two brand new ripping chains, in addition to having the saw professionally tuned up. Do you think that I'll let him borrow it again? You betcha!

[Bandmaster]

I remember back when I was in high school, one of sousaphones wouldn't play... no sound would come out at all... So I took it home and soaked it in warm water in the bath tub for a couple hours and finally a cardboard trombone mute floated up to the bell receiver. Somebody had stuffed it down the wrap point first so you couldn't grab onto it.

[tubatooter1940]

Before a Mardi Gras parade, the cutest girl in the band (Flute player) asked me if she could put her Cracker Jax she had just caught off a float, down my tuba. What was I gonna say, no?
When she dropped it in three other girls, almost as cute as the floutist, dropped theirs in too.
My tuba was super stuffy that day but I didn't mind. Those cuties owed me bigtime.

[WilliamVance]

My high school bought five used conn 11J convertible tubas my freshman year. They had been used for about 15 years at the Local University who had just purchased new sousaphones. Two of the horns had crumpled bells which had tears in them. The bell on my horn came unsoldered during a rehearsal... Then I was stuck with a King 1140 that smelt terrible. The upperclassmen told me that some pizza had been shoved down the bell as a joke the prior year. I'm not sure if it had all gotten out. Lastly, the Pan-American sousaphone I learned how to play on had NO bracing left on the lead-pipe, but it stayed pretty solid. I never marched that horn, just sat in my room and annoyed my mom. I thought maybe the horn was 20 years old... then later on I found out they were bought in the 40's or 50's... and that was 1995! Has anyone ever had their bits stolen by other bandmembers and then told they make cool pipes for smokin' weed?