Great design, not great brass. Other questions.

[Ken Crawford]

Buy American. Or at least, buy American if it's 90 years old.

Your signature doesn't match your advice.

[ghmerrill]

I guess my point is, stuff slips by over there sometimes. I'm not really sure how my issue happened, but with the fact that it did I wouldn't be surprised if someone botched a mixture of the brass, or something like that.

I remain puzzled about how these kinds of things manage to "slip through" to the customer. Sure, we can blame the Chinese for crappy quality control. But quality control can/should take place at every level -- especially if you know the factory quality control is undependable. Virtually every importer of these instruments says that they "examine" or "play test" every one before they send it out. But I KNOW this isn't true in at least some cases, and this examples appears to illustrate another such case.

I have even asked a vendor EXPLICITLY to examine the instrument I ordered prior to shipping it, was promised that this would happen, and yet the instrument arrived packaged in a way that indicated it had never been looked at since it left the factory. There's really no excuse for this, and the "low cost" of the instruments in question just can't justify this sort of negligence and laziness. It's also a really stupid business practice in several ways.

[ghmerrill]

Buy American. Or at least, buy American if it's 90 years old.

Your signature doesn't match your advice.

Um ... Too subtle once again. Sorry.

[TheGoyWonder]

The theory in original question isn't entirely unfounded and is pretty obvious in cars. Japanese cars of any significant age are usually rust-buckets, and equivalent American cars even with inferior design are not. Mazda vs GM for your most extreme example.

I've tried to clean up a crusty Yamaha with great valves, come back to it a few weeks later, and found it re-crusted itself. They may indeed have the Mazda syndrome - great manufacturing, **** materials. I don't know enough brass metallurgy to make it more than conjecture, and as far as instruments go the gauge/weight probably matters more than the composition. Yamahas do seem light for their size.

[Ken Crawford]

Buy American. Or at least, buy American if it's 90 years old.

Your signature doesn't match your advice.

Um ... Too subtle once again. Sorry.

Ahhh...I apologize. You sounded pretty convicted in you argument for 90 year old neglected instruments.

[lmhs1970]

I'm not sure how much of a problem it is for tubas, but I know some manufacturers are using brass alloys with a high zinc content, which for certain people can be more prone to red rot. I know my 97 year old tuba is rock solid, my 85 year old euphonium that I've played heavily since the age of 16 is rock solid, my thirteen year old high end trombone has a slide so riddled with red rot that multiple techs have told me to make my decision soon about how I will handle a slide failure. I'm fifty fifty between having the outer tubes and crook replaced with nickel silver and seeking out an Elkhart era 88H.
My girlfriend, a materials engineer and corrosion specialist, explained to me afterwards that there are multiple ways for brass to fail. Due to high copper prices the "yellow" brass used in many recent instruments has been somewhat higher than in the past. Zinc content above a certain threshold predisposes the instrument to "red rot." In high school about 15 years ago we had a Yamaha bass trombone that was brand new, and had a slide that was constantly out of alignment. The braces were so flexible that the it would shift under its own weight.

[pecktime]

Body chemistry varies dramatically. I know people whose hands (oils/ sweat?) wear through nickel-silver clarinet keys at alarming rates.

[MartyNeilan]

Many(-many) tubas/trumpets/trombones/euphoniums/horns that never suffer from dezinctification are approx. 70/30 "yellow" brass.

Very few brass instruments that I know of are made of brass with less than 70% copper.

Recently, I've seen quite a few 80/20 brass instruments (reddish/brownish in color) manufactured in China...either bell-only or entire instrument.

The differences in longevity and stamina of brass, more likely (rather than the alloy), are the players that use the instruments and the instruments' cleaning schedules.

Some players "dump" (they don't try to do this) tons of lime into brass instruments, whereas other players deposit almost none.
Some players who dump tons of lime into their instruments are aware of the problem, drown their instruments regularly with oil, and have the lime dissolved out of their instruments by professionals regularly, and many others either are not aware of the problem, or do not address the problem sufficiently.

fwiw, some instruments that manufacturers claim are made of "red brass" are actually made of bronze (copper and tin), whereas other "red brass" contains both zinc AND tin, making it technically BOTH brass AND bronze.

If a make/model of instrument is offered with a choice of two (or more) different allows of brass, (fwiw) I PERSONALLY tend to pick the HIGHER/HIGHEST zinc alloy (something like "yellow brass") because that's where (again) my personal sonic tastes (as well as desires for projection efficiency) naturally seem to direct me.

THINNER WALL yellow brass instruments seem to show more dezinctification, because (well...) it takes less TIME for lime deposits to dissolve zinc all the way through from the inside of the tubing to the outer surface of the instrument.

YES, 70/30 brass is FAR more subject to dezinctification than is 80/20, but the SOUND is also different and 70/30 will last for centuries if not assaulted with lime deposits or by other similar alkaline forces.

Not having much of anything to do with anything...but...I HAVE seen (both domestic and Chinese) instruments with parts obviously made of 100% copper where those parts were identified as "red brass".

I'm not going into the twenty-something various named brass alloys, because that's not really the topic here.

Finally, I have two customers with VERY expensive euphoniums (SURELY made of FINE QUALITY brass...though "yellow" brass) who both (again: they can't "help" it) "dump" tons of lime into their instruments, BOTH (un)routinely wait to bring them to me UNTIL the situation is SO bad that "rock formations" (really!) prevent their valves from being removed from these instruments' casings, and BOTH have rotted through their instruments in a few spots.

bloke "I don't know much about metal and alloys, but I have worked with a lot of metal, as well as having had worked with various alloys of metals in instruments. Again, care and maintenance are the keys. Even though high-copper brass and "nickel-silver" alloys (copper/tin/nickel) are very resistant to dezinctification, why in the world would someone with a 100% nickel silver horn wish to allow it to fill up with lime deposits?"

THESE are the kinds of posts that still make TubeNet worth viewing.