mandrake wrote:What about a crap tuba?
My first F tuba was a Musica that I bought in a surplus store for $1000. Premium F's at the time were in the range of $5K to 6K, with some cheaper alternatives just coming available (like the Yamaha 621 that was a bargain it's first couple of years).
That cheap Musica F would have been completely acceptable for the sorts of things a music-student needs an F for. It had only four valves, which made it unusable for things like quintet and for some solo literature, but it would do Berlioz and Stravinsky with no problem, along with most solo lit that really needs to be played on F.
I bought a more versatile F about a year or two later. When I did, I knew exactly what I wanted it to do, and I already knew how to play it. Also, I traded my Musica away (to a student who also used it to learn F) for about the same value in return as that $1000. Thus, the cost of ownership was zero.
For a similar instrument, think Amati.
And, for the record, I just paid less than half the price of a typical new F for an old five-valve B&S Symphonie, which many pros would be happy to use, and maybe happier to use than any new F. Shine is over-rated. I could easily have afforded this instrument with the proceeds of a summer job, say, stocking groceries.
Rick "who thinks any undergraduate tuba student should be able to demonstrate his potential on a Miraphone 186 or 188 contrabass and an Amati F, and use gig money, other earnings, and some trading skills to upgrade from there" Denney
