I was run of my bike by a car 15 years ago. My horn was on my back and took a lot of the impact. A local repairman lovingly and carefully restored my instrument (I wish the surgeons had done a similar job on me...) There was only one thing wrong: the threads of my detachable bell were not as secure as before and the bell would come of when hit.
I continued playing on this instrument, and one summer I went on tour with a slightly weird student orchestra which did a music theatre performance on and around the water every night. (http://www.ricciotti.nl Got to the auditions page and there's a picture of me )
For the performances the winds had to get on waterbikes before the show and pedal to a as a stage converted barge at the beginning of the show. Despite all precautions, while getting on the waterbike I slipped and landed spreadeagled between two waterbikes, the body of my instrument submerged, barely held between thumb and index finger and the bell 10 ft. below me on the bottom of Amsterdam harbor.....
Luckily we could salvage the bell, and after a good cleanup I continued playing this instrument. When I wanted to sell it, I had a problem because every hornplayer in Holland knew the story and didn't want to buy a horn which had been "at the bottom of the IJ river"
When my wife, within the first year of our marriage, got VERY mad at me and flattened the bottom bow of my 5/4 CC with a large rawhide mallet.
Still married almost 7 yrs later
I heard that Roger Bobo once backed over a horn and pratically killed it while living in L.A.
In Jr. High I left a bass trombone on the RTD, now metro or L.A. city bus. I remembered the horn just as the door shut but it was too late. The bus drove off despite me punching the side of it a few times as it drove by. I handed my backpack to a friend and took off running for the next stop.
Luckily there were a lot of people at the next stop and I git there just in time to get my horn back. I couldn't breath, but I had that school Bundy bass bone to take back the next day. I thought I was going to die.
The worst thing was getting my brand new Yorkbrunner from Custom Music. I picked it up in person at LAX and was so excited I couldn't wait to get home. When I opened the box, my heart dropped. This beautiful brand new horn had a smashed bell. I thought "Don't worry, just try it and see if you like it." So I did, and it was better than the other Yorkbrunners I had played. United airlines insurance paid to have Robb Stewart fix it up, and he even went beyond what I could have expected.
These days the horn has a bunch of dents. I don't care. As long as it plays, it stays.
Mine got stolen. That sucked, but at least it came back complete and undamaged.
I also fell on my contra when I was still in junior drum corps. We had a drill move during a drum break where we were literally running towards the back corner, then running towards the front. The show that night was on a baseball field (which had the football field lines painted entirely in the outfield; good for the corps, pretty far for the audience) and it was damp from rain earlier that day, so when I tried to plant my foot for the 120-degree turn, it.. well, it just didn't "plant".
I went right down and drilled all of my weight into the ground via the edge of the contra's bell. The guy next to me saw me falling and was thinking, "Oh, look at that, Leland's going down!", then realized, "Oh s&!*, I'm going down, too!" When we came back up for the next hit, complete with dance moves, the staff was surprised to see us come up with two mangled contra bells.
Backing over tubas is too much of a recurring theme. We must not be very bright.
I was leaving orchestra rehearsal in Austin about 15 years ago. My Yamaha F tuba was very new, and I also had my Miraphone (or maybe it was the Cerveny). I set the Yamaha (in its plastic case) on the ground at the trunk while I placed the big horn in the back seat. I then hopped in the car and backed up about ten feet. What made me stop was a horrible, loud grating noise that made me think something was terribly wrong with the car. I went back to investigate, and that's when I remembered I hadn't put the Yamaha in the trunk.
The sum total of the damage was a long scrape on the side of the case. Oh, and the ruined shorts.
Rick "who NEVER sets a tuba on the ground around the car, even if it requires doing a one-armed biceps curl with the Holton" Denney
one of my valves was sticking on my really crappy YBB 201, and I couldn't unscrew it myself... so I asked my dad, a car salesman/repairman... to unscrew it.
I left the room for a minute, and when I came back, he had removed the two valves that were fine, and was attacking the 1st valve with a pair of plyers... he then dented the second valve casing... I told him to stop, that we could take it to a music store and they would fix it, but he stubbornly refused. he grabbed some rounding tools from his garage, and hammered the top round... forgetting about the importants of a groove on inside... He got the valve back in, but it spun AND stuck... so he hammered at the top some more, until he had completely removed the threading on the outside of the valve...
THEN he took a sanding tool to the outside so that he could hammer the valve back in... and he 'made new own grooves and threading' but they didn't work too well, and the inside of the casing was all nasty and stuff...
I told him to give up, that maybe the music store could still fix it, but he ignored me again...
He took it to a car mechanic shop, who took an electric sander to the valve casing....
Fortunately, he completely murdered the horn... and I got a new, NICE tuba for Christmas... (-:
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