What have you found inside your instrument?

Tubaing · Post by **Tubaing** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 9:13 pm

What kind of "Treasures" have you found in used instruments or possibly new instruments?
So far, I found an old decomposed Bee Hive in a second valve tubing
a mouse and bugs in another tuba but amazingly, it did not notibly affect the sound
and some type of tiny (inch long) plant like thing in another.

andrew the tuba player · Sun Aug 19, 2007 10:25 pm

Well, when i first started, I pulled down an old Yammaha ybb 104 (since changed to 105) 3/4 student horn...There was a lot of make up in it (lip gloss, lip stick, eye shadow) that was real dusty and...ew...And, i pulled a Conn 20j (my favorite) from our storage bands storage. I left it in the tub of a couple hours to clean and, when i came back the water was bright red. I looked in the bell and found a sack full of red sharpies and an old poster that all the ink had run off. No wonder it had a buzz in the tone

djwesp · Post by **djwesp** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 10:27 pm

In High School (years ago), a girl took it upon herself to put a "garden" snake inside one of the sousaphones. I'm not sure who it was targeted against, but it went unnoticed for the remaining performance that season.

The horn spent the winter,spring, summer, untouched. The first rehearsal the following year, a guy picked it up. Put it to his lips to blow on it... taking in a big breath... of dead, rotten, snake on the inside of the horn. He threw up all over himself. One of the funniest and most disgusting things EVER.

The girl confessed, once a brass guy had fished the nasty remains of the snake out. She was booted, i can't remember if she got suspended or not.

Tubainsauga · Post by **Tubainsauga** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 10:57 pm

A hockey puck actually. No, it was not as school horn. Yes, I used it regularly. And no, I didn't notice until I brought the horn in for some other work. (If you're wondering, it was Besson 983 and it was lodged in the back half of the bottom bow. It was in there for probably 6 months or so. Ron had to take the whole bottom bow off to get it out.)

oldbandnerd · Post by **oldbandnerd** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 11:24 pm

Really bad notes.Lots of them .

Dan Schultz · Post by **Dan Schultz** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 11:55 pm

I bought a Mirafone 183 Eb a couple of years ago that had a 'stuffy' low 'C'. After running a snake through the horn a couple of times looking for obstuctions, I found a TubaChristmas 1985 button hanging in the back bow like a stove pipe damper.

pierso20 · Post by **pierso20** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 12:06 am

it was a ritual in my high school marching band to fill the sousa of the newbie with a gallon of more of water..........

always funny....

"what's the muffle"....tips it over.....gushes water.....

Tom Holtz · Post by **Tom Holtz** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 12:14 am

In my plastic sousaphone in high school, after half a football season, I turned it over and dumped out a calculator and a ski mask. The ski mask had leaves and twigs all over it. That went in the trash, the calculator lasted through h.s. and two years of college.

KevinMadden · Post by **KevinMadden** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 12:47 am

high school sousa would ofetn have soda bottle, paper towel rolls, and toy cars

tubatooter1940 · Post by **tubatooter1940** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 5:32 am

Found a dead bat (big one).

bearphonium · Post by **bearphonium** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 10:43 am

Just pulled a tootsie pop wrapper out of my first valve spring in a borrowed middle school souzy.

TubaingAgain · Post by **TubaingAgain** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 7:43 pm

LONG tima ago back in high school Sousaphone were kept in a locked room while not being used for marching band. Wasnt my sousaphone but a used condom was found deep inside a sousaphone. HMMMMMMM Didnt have DNA processing back then.

jbaylies · Post by **jbaylies** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 9:58 pm

A little deflated red "class of 2000" party balloon.

Conn 2J CC · Post by **Conn 2J CC** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 10:47 pm

A repairman friend of mine had a Tuba brought to him with a problem. When someone would first start to play it, the horn played okay. But as they continued to play it the horn would get stuffy, and progressively worse the longer they played. And yes, this was a Tuba, not a woodwind instrument with a bad reed or pad problem.

The culprit? A donut lodged deep inside. As the humidity would rise inside of the horn from warm air being blown into it, the donut would swell, further blocking the airflow.

Dean E · Post by **Dean E** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 11:35 pm

Tubaing wrote:What kind of "Treasures" have you found in used instruments or possibly new instruments? . . .

The plastic bottle was very difficult to dislodge without disassembly. I did it by using lead weights (inserted in the tuning slide) as slide hammers.

graybach · Post by **graybach** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 1:32 am

An alarm clock.
Gra y Bach

LoyalTubist · Post by **LoyalTubist** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 2:23 am

My black cat; she was sleeping in it when the tuba was turned on its side.

And I think I told you about the sack consisting of a hamburger/fries/Coke lunch I found in a Colton Junior High School sousaphone in 1969 or 1970. They were bought at the original McDonald's on E Street in San Bernardino in 1962.

tubacody · Post by **tubacody** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 7:20 pm

In HS, I found several...SEVERAL pair of large, stained, girls panties apparently thrown during a Mardi Gras parade some 20 years prior. The HS I was at dwindled from 20 souzies to just 3 in those years, so over time, this one horn hadn't been touched. I can see why...

Davy · Post by **Davy** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 7:51 am

Once at a MArching Band rehersal, one of our tubas was rattling quite a bit, so we turned it over, and out came a hair pick one our guys had lost a while ago....

ger · Post by **ger** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 8:17 am

I found a tuba strap of thick black leather, decorated with white strips. It was originally designed for horses, I bought it in Rumania, shortly after I started playing tuba. I adapted it for my King and then it got lost, couldn't find it for a long time. Low notes were a bit stuffy but I thought I just had to work on that.

TubeNet

What have you found inside your instrument?

What have you found inside your instrument?

Re: What have you found inside your instrument?

Odd findings...