...so - if you want to really protect your instrument's bell flair...

[bloke]

...get a really heavy-duty hard case.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/353579043576

https://www.ebay.com/itm/114895550972

[the elephant]

The fact that the seller calls those junky Unitec cases "Anvil" cases ought to get him banned from eBay. That is flat-out lying.

[bloke]

fwiw...
I am not a fan of the lower-alphabet brand that you mentioned in your response to my post.
Several years ago, I bought two of those sousaphone cases (used) that needed new liners. Before I bought them, I had that company quote me on new liners for them. Based on the quote, I bought the cases. When it came time to buy the liners, they jacked up their prices to triple what they quoted.
I was going to sell a pair of 20K sousaphones in those cases. As the cost of the refurbished cases suddenly became prohibitive, I could neither sell nor give away those cases, and threw them in the dump, after buying them.

[the elephant]

I was only pointing out that the eBay seller has clearly misidentified junk cases with the much better Anvil cases. I did not say anything about How bad Anvil has become since its heyday in the 1990s. I would not buy one today. However, identifying a Unitec "real heavy box" that does nothing to protect the tuba as an approved ATA flight case is misleading, to be as nice as I can about it. A real Anvil case is worth a LOT more than these big, wooden coffins that offer zero protection.

I am sorry if Anvil screwed with you. But their cases are infinitely superior to Unitec. There is no comparison. My Anvil with my 188 was allowed to fall off of the luggage conveyor up into a 747, so it fell about three stories to the tarmac. No damage to the horn. None. If one of those Unitec cases fell that far they would shatter into large sheets of plywood and a crushed beer can with a mouthpiece receiver. No protection in falls or crashes at all. I have seen this happen with my own eyes. And the fact that VS pushed them makes me like them even less.

Cheer up. Even if Anvil is now run by jerks their product is still outstanding, and if you purchase one used you can thumb your nose at them and save a few bucks.

(My experience in this regard is ten years of fairly regular transatlantic flights with about six different horns using various cases, frequently traveling with other tubists who used different cases, and the results that we witnessed in person when TWA ground personnel, AKA luggage flingers, at St. Louis [by far the WORST place for a tuba to have to be transferred from one plane to another] dropped tubas to the tarmac — repeatedly, for years. I guess the same crew worked there for many years, heh, heh…)

[bloke]

yeah...Anvil cases feature tough cortexes, but those folks were not nice to me during that episode.

...any tuba falling that far in any case, with no damage:

I'd chalk that up to luck, more than to any case.
That's just too far to not end up with some sort of damage, were that operation repeated a couple of times (OK: in my estimation).

Wandering off on a tangent..

The most important thing, though, about protecting what's inside something (as automobile designers discovered) is not how damage-resistant the exterior shell of a protective case might be...

...Any case that features padding that comes in contact with (in particular) a bell rim puts that bell at serious risk of creasing, if the bell-end of that case is impacted. Just as with jumping off a bridge hundreds of feet above water (which defines nearly certain death, unless someone - likely, some super-expert - enters the water at some ideal angle), that padding becomes very "hard" upon any significant-velocity impact. Cases with a w-i-d-e braided nylon strap around the tuba's bottom bow - which keeps the bell rim away from the bell-end of a case - are those which are most likely to prevent or minimize bell damage. Further, if the strap around the bottom bow is allowed to flex a little bit (with a pad within the strap), the tuba may end up coming to a stop (as "the stop" is where the damage occurs) slower than the the case itself comes to a stop...and the inside arc of a bottom bow is not only pretty dent resistant (due to it's shape), but it's also pretty thick (due to manufacturing processes).

Some other types of damage (forklift penetration, etc.) are pretty much non-preventable, regardless of the materials (at least, from the array of those chosen thus far) selected to fabricate a case shell.

[donn]

If I'm doing the math right, from 30 feet it would hit a 30mph, which is a lot; at 12 feet it would hit at 20mph, which is enough I'm not sure it would make any real difference. Anyway, you know how when you were younger, everything seemed taller.