After 60 years of playing tuba,

[Ken Herrick]

It looks like the time has come to take up the harmonica instead.
I recently had a skin cancer cut out of the side of my nose. The bloody doctor decided to take a skin graft from about an inch to the side under the cheek(against my instructions). The graft did not even take and it must have damaged nerves meaning I now get symptoms like focal dystonia. Playing is no longer an option. Guess I'll soon be posting in the for sale forum.

If some doctor wants to go making cuts in your face; proceed with great care.

[windshieldbug]

It looks like the time has come to take up the harmonica instead.

Sucks big time, but at least you already know the Vaughan-Williams...

[bort]

Hrmm... so you'll be a 65 year old Australian harmonica virtuoso? There's a market!

But really, that just sucks, sorry to hear it. Sue for malpractice?

[Ken Herrick]

Thank you, to everybody who has responded here, by PM or email.

At 69 years I knew it had to come before too long. The worst part is that I have had to cancel engagements and let a couple groups down.
I had a couple nice gigs lined up through to the end of the year and had thought it might be time to "retire" after that. This just brought it on earlier than I wanted.

Guess I'll just have to find something else to fill that part of each day that was devoted to playing.

[TubaTodd]

Ken, I'm saddened to read your news and bad experience with your Doctor. As bloke said, hopefully the final outcome will be better than your current circumstances.

After a 10+ year hiatus, I took up playing bass guitar again in 2013. God provided me with a steady gig within months of playing again. Now I have regular gigs (like tonight's pool party) with my big band/dance band. My wife (a flutist) joined the band as an Alto sax player. This group has been a blessing for the two of us. I do still play tuba, but not nearly as much as I have been playing bass.

Hopefully, you can still keep making wonderful bass tones in another way.

[Donn]

Also, if you start to miss lugging a tuba around, lugging a bass amplifier around could more than make up for it, depending on what you get. Mine is 48 lbs according to the manufacturer, and that's only a 12 inch speaker.

[imperialbari]

Not good! But have a neurologist checking the objective damages and coming up with a prognosis.

Klaus

[iiipopes]

Folks, the lightest weight, value-for-money, durable for gigging, combo bass amps are the Carvin MB series. The amplifier section is 200w/8ohms class D, and the MB10 weighs 26 pounds. I gig the MB12 for both electric bass and double bass, and it weighs a "whopping" 30 pounds. Occasionally I add a 1X15 extension cab where I have to carry the house with against other electric guitars, and with the extension cab it is rated at 250w/4ohms. The built-in XLR out is clean enough for my band's new top-of-the-line servo controlled Behringer fully digital board, and has all the "bells and whistles" necessary to tailor sound to the gig and venue, all the way from personal monitor to stage monitor to carrying a small to medium sized venue, including outdoor amplified jazz band or rock band gigs. I have gigged Carvin amps for over twenty years. My original Carvin bass head from 1993 is still going strong as a rehearsal hall mule. The only reason I don't take it on stage is that I am too lazy to replace a couple of filter capacitors to keep noise at rock bottom. Frankly, at my age, I don't anticipate ever needing to purchase another amplifier unless an untoward accident happens to it.

I have gigged every significant make of amplifier that has been made since 1976, and some of the "classic" ones when they were still relatively new amps, and owned many of them at one time or another, including gigging with Fender (tube and solid state) Hartke, Trace Elliot, G-K, Sunn, Acoustic, Mesa, Mark Bass, Ampeg "pop-up" etc., and owning various models of Fender, Ampeg, Peavey, Polytone, Ashdown, Marshall, SWR, etc., in the last 40 years.

[GC]

Over the last 42 years I've used amps of widely varying sizes by Peavey, Yamaha, Gallien-Krueger (2 heads and a combo), Hartke, Ampeg (SVT), Fender, and MarkBass. The Hartke was unbelievably reliable and durable, but was heavy as lead. The 3 GK's sounded great but all three went bad in a relatively short time.

My favorite has been MarkBass. I've had my current MarkBass 2 X 10 combo for 6 years and had NO problems with it. I bought it for the weight, but have stayed with it for the sound, which is smooth, space-filling, and seriously loud for its size. The XLR output is extremely clean and quiet. They're not the lightest amps, though they're lighter than most. They're not the most powerful, though they have power to spare for most gigs. They're expensive, but I feel they give you what you pay for.

[Ken Herrick]

I sincerely apologize for leading this thread off-track.

I'm very good at trolling, but this troll was unintentional.

What the heck, since before the new (current) tubenet - like back in the prior millennium - we have been leading each other astray.

Gowl, no wonder I sometimes feel old!!

If only Jake had taught me how to avoid getting that way - instead of just saying I wouldn't like it.