Current, US tuba manufacturing?

[LargeTuba]

Making tubas in the USA just can’t really be profitable. Tubas are the hardest instrument to manufacture, and it’s not even close.

Also there’s just not enough skilled workers. People don’t want to go into a very highly skilled trade that doesn’t pay very well.

[2nd tenor]

Making tubas in the USA just can’t really be profitable. Tubas are the hardest instrument to manufacture, and it’s not even close.

Also there’s just not enough skilled workers. People don’t want to go into a very highly skilled trade that doesn’t pay very well.

That’s puzzling to me. There was a time when the USA had many successful instrument makers, what went wrong?

[DonO.]

Making tubas in the USA just can’t really be profitable. Tubas are the hardest instrument to manufacture, and it’s not even close.

Also there’s just not enough skilled workers. People don’t want to go into a very highly skilled trade that doesn’t pay very well.

That’s puzzling to me. There was a time when the USA had many successful instrument makers, what went wrong?

The answer to “what went wrong” to me is obvious. The cost of skilled labor in the USA rose to the point where it became impossible to compete against offshore (cheap labor) instrument makers.

That is only the biggest reason though. There are other factors as well. I remember as a young, just beginning to become serious tuba player, trying to decide which horn to buy for my first serious tuba. This was in the 70’s, when university “tuba culture” was starting to really emerge, with the influence of university level tuba teachers. The message my young impressionable mind received from many different sources was “Don’t buy an American tuba, no one will take you seriously. To be taken seriously, your tuba MUST be made in Germany!”. And of course you could tell at a glance, because ALL German instruments had rotary valves, and American tubas have pistons. Again, what I was told by many at the time was maybe you prefer pistons, but German horns are better and they have rotors, so you just better get used to them. I’m not sure at what point the European tuba makers started offering pistons, but I’m convinced it was in response to demand from the American market. But I digress. Then there was the CC thing. Nobody will take you seriously if you play BBb. That’s so high school. Professionals always play CC. Fortunately for me, my teacher didn’t buy into the CC thing. So I could stay on BBb. But otherwise I bought the hype, ignored all Conns and Kings and such, and ended up with a Meinl Weston 25.

I apologize for rambling somewhat, but my point is that the manufacturers of American tubas were seriously injured by the opinions and so called “collective wisdom” of the artiste types and university professors. I realize now too late that there were some really nice horns being built in the USA back then that I should have considered.

[hrender]

Capital is like water in that it tends to seek the lowest point of cost. Seeking cheaper sources of labor and resources is as old as civilization. That said, some cultures value local labor and hand-craft even when it comes at a higher price. The US is not universally one of those places.

[tokuno]

. . . King has added cost cutting moves on the new style 2341 that lowered their build cost, but also further lowered the build quality - such as the removable valve section. . .

Love the removable valve section.
My (new-version) 2341 has lain fallow for a couple years, but I loaned it out to a player a couple weeks ago for a Christmas concert dress-rehearsal, and then ended up filling in the section myself due to an illness absence.
It took only a few minutes last night to pull & flush the valve section, oil it up, and stow it back in storage. 4 screws (+1 & a thumbscrew for the leadpipe) and that's it. So convenient!
I used to receive a lot more unsolicited compliments before I sold the 1291, so I infer that I sounded better on it from the audience perspective than the 2341, but the King is a much better value for me as a pick-up-&-play, push-button occasional horn.
My outlay, iirc was $3500 for the silver version.

[tofu]

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[bloke]

If you paid that price in the year 2000, I would beg to differ about the deal that you got. Any inflation calculator will tell you that he got the better deal.

I could say that I got a great deal on a new Miraphone 184 in 1976 - because I paid 1600 bucks for it, but that's totally ignoring the dynamics of the currency.

[tofu]

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[bloke]

yes to all...

Additionally, I'm a little bit different from most people. I try to never to borrow money to buy anything. I have friends who tell me that I should mortgage my house and invest that money and blah blah blah, but I point out to them that no one offering to invest their money is anyone's friend other than their own, and there's not a single person alive who doesn't need a shelter to live in...I would just as soon own mine.

Borrowing money works out okay for some people, but I believe it's a potential road the poor house (the same "house" that our rulers would have all of us dwelling in...and be ready for another "omnibus" budget, and a few more triĺions of bucks of debt piled on...). It's (still, in spite of all that's done to us) easy enough to make money, without having to borrow it - other than for some sort of emergency...and no one (without literally printing it - thus simultaneously loaning and destroying it) wants to loan to anyone who actually needs money.

[tokuno]

yes to all...

Additionally, I'm a little bit different from most people. I try to never to borrow money to buy anything. I have friends who tell me that I should mortgage my house and invest that money and blah blah blah, but I point out to them that no one offering to invest their money is anyone's friend other than their own, and there's not a single person alive who doesn't need a shelter to live in...I would just as soon own mine.

Borrowing money works out okay for some people, but I believe it's a potential road the poor house (the same "house" that our rulers would have all of us dwelling in...and be ready for another "omnibus" budget, and a few more triĺions of bucks of debt piled on...). It's (still, in spite of all that's done to us) easy enough to make money, without having to borrow it - other than for some sort of emergency...and no one (without literally printing it - thus simultaneously loaning and destroying it) wants to loan to anyone who actually needs money.

I'm with you and I think there's a lot of us.
My parents were born during the depression-era (1921, 1926) into poor immigrant families. My Mom wistfully remembers her unfulfilled childhood dream to have a pair of pretty, patent leather "girl" shoes (they were often bare-foot on the farm, and wore sturdy, practical hand-me downs otherwise). I was raised by these penny-squeezing, "we might need it some day", save-for-the-inevitable-emergency lay-awayers who refused on principle to own a credit card until the late 70s or early 80s (when it became necessary for some transactions).
We've raised 4 kids without carrying a credit card balance or car loan. My siblings have the same mindset, and I've encountered a number of like-minded colleagues in the office (in the heart of the Silicon Valley rat race, of all places).
How this relates back to tubas is that the Miraphone 1291 purchase was an affordable whim that did not perceptibly affect our finances an iota, but the King suffices at much lower outlay, which warms the cockles of my frugal little heart as a better value, so I wholeheartedly appreciated, applauded (and chuckled over) tofu's lower price (hey, even a BETTER value - way to go!).

[bloke]

Admittedly, the tuba that I most recently purchased is not mainstream and actually could be said to flow in the opposite direction of the mainstream, but maybe that's part of what I am. I dragged my feet for the better part of a decade before I purchased this thing, thinking about owning one that entire time, being able to, but just biding my time...and - as I've already explained elsewhere - looked around to see what was not earning me any money, and sold that stuff rather than pulling money out of the bank, or borrowing on a credit card or from a bank.

Also, I'm completely aware that there are those who look askance at me, because I don't readily embrace either pop culture or groupthink and because I'm not timid about my skepticism. I'm in my sixties (not in my seventies or eighties - if I happen to hold up that long). Some people say that 60s are the new 40s.. whatever. My way of thinking though is probably considered to be antiquated, and there's a reason for it:
Were my father alive today, he would be 106 years old. My grandparents were all born in the 1880s, I knew all four of them well, and one of them was born in 1881.
My father and I didn't talk all that much, but when we did, he taught me about thinking first before automatically embracing groupthink or things that - no matter how widely purveyed and no matter how authoritatively they are purveyed - seem to be nonsensical and/or destructive.

There's little choice in America or throughout the world today other than to buy and sell things made in China, and I'm referring to buying and selling a lot of things made in China as opposed to things made in one's own country or region of the world. Further, it's easy to understand how crumbling first world countries' manufacturing quality is going down, because they are desperately trying to compete in the market against China as well as other third world and second world manufacturing. I don't think this dependency on manufacturing from one area of the world is going to lead to anything good, and this is my paragraph that's topical to this thread.

[tofu]

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