I lived in Japan for 7 and a half years and am headed back for another 3 years this summer. Japan are like us in that they use both BBb and CC. Elementary and through high school use BBb and then switch to CC if they want to do a career in music. Southeast Asians countries that I have toured who are ...

People looking at stuff like the new Eastman 4/4 piston CC tubas should think long and hard about this option. Really great tubas and I’m sure fantastic with the modifications. There’s a reason why Lee Stofer is still building these things (and they get snapped up as soon as they are built). Thank y ...

Price drop to $6,000.00. I am willing to take a Miraphone 186 or possibly 188 CC for a trade but the tuba has to be in top shape. No striped lacquer or scaring from bad dent removal. If the tuba is not sold by end of May it will go to Japan with me.

Bump.

Physical therapy has allowed me to be able to play my tuba again. I am keeping it.

I am almost 99% sure the conn Eb bell that is on that tuba was from a tuba I sold Shane back in 2013 when I was on leave from Japan. I drove up to New York City and dropped it off to a mutual friend of ours in time square. Yes I walked around time square with a tuba. I got that Eb tuba from my old ...

Congrats Wade!
Performing during COVID brings about a lot of challenges. The band I perform with is currently doing online videos and only accepting outside gigs. I am happy to be performing again and hope to be able to perform some Christmas caroling on base as long as the COVID numbers stay low.

...and I also wonder why K never made (at least, that I ever saw) any real front-action tuba valvesets, and everything appeared to be improvised from top-action valvesets I have asked (myself) this exact same question. I assume (?) it would have to do with available tooling, assuming he made his ...

A lot of good stuff here. In terms of what the actual make up of the Kanstul brass is I don’t know. When I was apprenticing under Tom Kanstul was still in business so it was a company secret. My goal with this post was not so much to discuss the validity of the Kanstul Alloy(although you are more t ...

Is the Stofer 6/4 CC at all related to the Kanstul story? I was really saddened when Kanstul closed. I had considered their 5/4 CC a few times in the past, but was always warned against it. Older ones had funky ergonomics. All of them were inconsistent, and some needed an awful lot of slide pulling ...

Yes they did have a metal distributor located within the US that made the alloy for them based off the multiple tests done to determine the metal make up of the original York metal samples. Do you have any idea who? This would be extremely expensive unless the distributor had other uses for the ...

The Stofer 6/4 is a Martin Mammoth body, Kanstul 6/4 York alloy tuba bell, Kanstul valve section and leadpipe. Lee obviously knows more about that project but I believe it started out by someone asking him to convert a Martin Mammoth to a CC tuba. I got to play one and he currently has one at the ...

For the record other than knowing that Eastman sent a 6/4 tuba to Tom and Bob to get their opinion I have no idea what Eastman is doing with their 6/4. I only speculated that they were using the Kanstul 6/4 bell tooling to make new bells that have come up in conversation on tubenet.

Yes they did have a metal distributor located within the US that made the alloy for them based off the multiple tests done to determine the metal make up of the original York metal samples.

I see from time to time people bring up the Kanstul alloy as some gimmick and quick way to make a buck. I personally know and worked with both Tom Treece and Robert Carpenter the two men who discovered through scientific ways to bring back the York alloy and bring back old York tubas for modern day ...

I would suggest having someone with a bore scope check the valve alignment. Yes the markings may line up on the backing plate but the markings could be wrong. On my Stofer/Getzen CB50 the 5th valve rotary valve markings on the down stroke are completely wrong. If I go by the markings my valve goes ...

You should have the nickel stripped off of the mouthpiece first. Vladimir, who is associated with Dillon Music, can perfect your shank exterior for you, as that is one of his specialties. Me…?? I just don’t know if I would do all that to Sear Helleberg, because that is the stuff that you would have ...

Thank you everyone for the great replies! I had Dan Oberloh replate a Laskey 30H for me. He did a great job! I also have a friend here in Japan Hirotaka that replated a mouthpiece for me as well. He also did a great job. It was interesting to see both mouthpieces replated by two different people ...

I have a old nickel silver Sear Helleberg lying around. I am thinking of having it sliver plated. Has anyone had their Sear Helleberg silver plated? The shank on my Sear Helleberg doesn’t seat right in a American shank receiver as it moves around. I know cost wise it’s not very effective as the mou ...

I want to thank Tom for all his help with making my tuba case. Tom made a soft case for my Stofer/Getzen CB50. Making a case is difficult, making a case for a tuba on the other side of the world is very difficult. The case shipped July 4th and after a month of slow military mail it made it to me in ...