Today, two sousaphones (different makes) came in - BOTH with trashed lower mouthpipe tubes.
One was minimally braced and the other was epically braced.
My point - all along - is that all of that extra bracing is silly, because - when a child fails to loosen the neck tension screw - the neck is a plenty large "handle" to tear apart ANY lower mouthpipe bracing and twist the $h!t out of both the lower mouthpipe tube and - possibly - the neck as well...
Here's halfway through emergency sousaphone repair #2a (first of two sousaphones).
This lower mouthpipe was twisted/spiraled flat and cracked. (This sousaphone is only a few months old, so not rotted.)
The rough looking area is where I had to use oval steel dent-removal balls, an expander, and a dent hammer to put it back as it was - and then use silver brazing wire to repair the cracks plus add a layer of reinforcing melted silver wire.
"We need these back quick..."
OK...so maybe
- Insist that your students USE THE FRIGGIN TENSION SCREWS !!!
(We would have received demerits, our parents would have had to pay for it, we would have had to pay our parents back, and - if we did it a second time - we would have received a paddling from the band director PLUS all the previous.)
CannabisFlakes® for breakfast...??
a lack of experience in the 3D world (98% phone/TV-staring)...??
a lack of accountability/no consequences...??
NO ONE reading this has ever busted ANY lower mouthpipe brace system loose (nor spiraled/flattened a lower mouthpipe tube).
EVERYONE reading this has played a sousaphone, and EVERYONE reading this uses the tension screw.
Back in the early-through later 1970's NO ONE in my junior/senior/college bands (and they weren't all geniuses) EVER busted lower mouthpipe braces or lower mouthpipe tubes...nor ANYTHING on their sousaphones.
What I'm saying is the QUANTITY of bracing crap doesn't make a damn bit of difference.
TIGHTENING and LOOSENING the TENSION SCREW makes ALL the difference.
...and yes...just as with bass clarinet floor peg hardware, THIS late in the "extended summer repairs season" we have ALSO used up all of our spare various-makes lower mouthpipe tubes...so (yup) it's just as with the Cuban auto mechanics who continue to keep those 1950's American cars running: reconstruct what's there, or make a new thing
