Nice cheap Chinese tuba!?!

Chriss2760 · Post by **Chriss2760** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 3:38 pm

I bought one for my daughter about 18 months ago. I was looking for a horn that she could take to pep band basketball and football games. Her horn plays VERY flat. I had my tech take as much of the lead pipe off as he could, but it stills plays very high across the entire range.
On the plus side, the valves are remarkably light and crisp.
When the basketball came flying in from stage left and scored a direct hit on the horn I felt very good that she wasn't playing a more expensive horn.

MartyNeilan · Post by **MartyNeilan** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 3:41 pm

Chriss2760 wrote:I bought one for my daughter about 18 months ago. I was looking for a horn that she could take to pep band basketball and football games. Her horn plays VERY flat. I had my tech take as much of the lead pipe off as he could, but it stills plays very high across the entire range.
On the plus side, the valves are remarkably light and crisp.
When the basketball came flying in from stage left and scored a direct hit on the horn I felt very good that she wasn't playing a more expensive horn.

Cheeep old fiberglass sousaphones often sever this purpose as well.

TubaRay · Post by **TubaRay** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 4:44 pm

Chriss2760 wrote: Her horn plays VERY flat.

but it stills plays very high across the entire range.

Which is it?

TubaRay · Post by **TubaRay** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 4:45 pm

MartyNeilan wrote:
Chriss2760 wrote:I bought one for my daughter about 18 months ago. I was looking for a horn that she could take to pep band basketball and football games. Her horn plays VERY flat. I had my tech take as much of the lead pipe off as he could, but it stills plays very high across the entire range.
On the plus side, the valves are remarkably light and crisp.
When the basketball came flying in from stage left and scored a direct hit on the horn I felt very good that she wasn't playing a more expensive horn.
Cheeep old fiberglass sousaphones often sever this purpose as well.

I guess it does cut it that way. I hadn't thought of that.

BVD Press · Post by **BVD Press** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 5:05 pm

It seems quite odd that it is listed on Woodwind side of Dillon Music????

Chuck(G) · Post by **Chuck(G)** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 5:34 pm

It seems that many of these Chinese tubas need to be cut slightly more so than they need to have slides pulled a long way. Anyone know why this is?

Dan Schultz · Post by **Dan Schultz** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 6:43 pm

Chuck(G) wrote:It seems that many of these Chinese tubas need to be cut slightly more so than they need to have slides pulled a long way. Anyone know why this is?

Huh?

SplatterTone · Post by **SplatterTone** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 6:49 pm

My first tuba was a Chinese horn very similar to this one. I got it from Bandfolio. .709 bore and approx. 14-inch bell. I asked, but he didn't tell me who made it. I don't know if he is still selling the same horn.

Response and intonation are excellent, and I do mean excellent. Complaints are that the laquer is thin -- in some spots not much more than a light dusting of lacquer; first and third slides are tight. Otherwise, a good horn. Rotors are very good. I would speculate that the Chinese tuba industry has made some improvements since my horn was made. This size horn is very easy to haul around when all you need is horn to play and you're not trying to impress anyone.

Chuck(G) · Post by **Chuck(G)** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:27 pm

TubaTinker wrote:Huh?

I've worked on three of these Chinese horns so far. Each one of them played around 20 cents flat with the tuning slide pushed in. Looks like the one at Dillon's did too.

SplatterTone · Post by **SplatterTone** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:44 pm

played around 20 cents flat

Maybe be catering to the India market? I had to do some chopping on my India euphonium.

Chriss2760 · Post by **Chriss2760** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 9:33 pm

Her horn plays VERY flat. I had my tech take as much of the lead pipe off as he could, but it stills plays very high across the entire range.

Oops...yeah, I meant to say that it was sharp across the range. (I was in a hurry when I wrote it and didn't proofread. Sorry.) You can see that the horn has a whole lot of leadpipe, and honestly, I think we would have been better off to get one of the generic ones and cut it down until we got what we wanted.

As I said, I bought the horn with the idea that it would get pretty beat up in the last couple years of my daughter's high school career and it did. I played a couple of times with her pep band when she was getting started and had serious concerns that something really bad was going to happen to MY axe.

FWIW: I paid $750 for the horn (off of Ebay) and it wears the brand name Berkeley. The horn was shipped out of San Francisco and the seller was very prompt, courteous and professional.

Purely speculation here, but I think that if whomever is designing, manufacturing and distributing these horns were to put in some good R&D time they might be able to manufacture a nice horn. The fit and finish is better than I expected (ok, I didn't expect much!)

Bottom line: I don't think most players are going to be happy with these horns until they can get the intonation issues resolved.

SplatterTone · Post by **SplatterTone** » Tue Apr 10, 2007 9:41 pm

I paid $750 for the horn

I'll bet most $750 horns will have a few imperfections whether it's new Chinese or old, beat up German. Mine was $850 delivered with hard(-ish) case, and I think I got my money's worth.

Chriss2760 · Post by **Chriss2760** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 12:47 pm

Ok-third time is the charm: The horn is FLAT. It has always been FLAT, although now that the leadpipe has been SHORTENED it is not as FLAT as it was. (Except for the leadpipe which was round, then was FLAT, and is now back to mostly round.)

Tubaguy56 · Post by **Tubaguy56** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 1:13 pm

you generally won't get anymore than you pay for. I'll never forget when I bought a 100 dollar valve trombone from india, and I can't believe that I actually expected it to to work well enough to use in performance.