My Sousaphone Is Bleeding?! Black stains on arms & clothing

[Funcoot]

I don't mean bleeding in the literal sense. I heard rumors that sousaphones "bleed" and leave marks on certain color clothing. Is this true? Well I kind of found it to be, a few months ago during the school year, we got some sousaphones fixed (this was during concert season though). So we unpacked them really quick and tested them out. Well after about 20 minutes of some goofing off, we decided to put the sousaphones back up. Upon doing so, we found we were covered in black residue on our arms and shirt.

What was this? The only thing I could even remotely connect it to is if some kind of residue was left over from polishing (we noticed they polished them up nicely! ). Is this common for sousaphones? I can't really think it is.

The reason I ask this is because we got night rehearsal tonight, and I was gonna just wear a white t-shirt (no dress code), but now I'm thinking otherwise.

[iiipopes]

Are they silver? If I go awhile without playing the 38K, I'll get black tarnish off the satin silver all over me.

[Funcoot]

Yup, they're silver plated.

[sloan]

It's a bit trickier to get a transparent finish on silver with red rouge, but can be done with a good buffing wheel, the correct rpm's, and a good touch.

So...you do it for the challenge?

[Frank Byrne]

Here's what always worked for me -- and I was fanatical about shining my silver sousaphone. I polished it with Silvo, which DID leave black marks afterward. Once I had gotten off as much as I could, I did a quick wipedown with Windex and it took all the black off. Even better, if I wiped down with just Windex regularly, it cut down on the need to polish as often. Give it a shot.

[jconner11]

Hmm sometimes my sousaphone has a leaky spit valve and the condensation that leaks out leaves a nasty greenish/black mark on my shirt. probably not the same thing though i usually just stick a wad of paper towels in there works wonders