TubaForum.net

<rant>

Why are these so hard to find? I have a wonderful one sold to me years ago by HornGuys. I think it was a Conn product. It has blue vinyl and is like six feet long, with 1.5" brushes on the ends; it is excellent. It is not the one you can find on the Miraphone website that I cannot seem to purchase from. (The Miraphone product has red vinyl.)

All I can locate online is "baritone/tuba" snakes, which frankly, are too small, and in some cases, the brushes will come off inside the instrument. Within a year, the vinyl sheathing hardens, cracks, and eventually starts to flake off inside the valves of the instrument, wreaking havoc.

Typical TEMU-exque garbage.

Why is it so hard to find such a simple thing? I had a thousand of these made for me by a company in Brooklyn in 1986, and I sold them out of the back of the International Musician. (I wanted to sell them out of The Instrumentalist, but I could in no way afford the ad space for even one issue!) I sold them off simply to pay for the minimum order that allowed me to get one for myself. It was a long, stupid process, but that snake lasted me for 20 years, so I never thought about undertaking another order and then selling them off.

Why should I need to do this? It is a freaking snake. Aren't there enough of us out there with the dollars needed to merit such a product?

This situation has been a problem forever. No one complains about it. We occasionally are offered a superior product, but it is withdrawn from the market because we are too cheap to support it. (And in many cases [MANY] we are simply too disgusting to be bothered with cleaning out our leadpipes on a regular basis, so we fail to see a need for a properly-sized snake.)

</rant>

This is to clean out tight (large bore) crooks and between-case ports. I have the HF brushes and like them. Just not for getting schmutz out of those areas where my fingers either don't fit or cannot rub all the way around the tube surface. My lovely, bigass blue snake is great, but I want to have more than one to rely on.

Snakes clean very well when they have the correct diameter brushes. A euph brush in a tuba does little to nothing, as a trumpet snake would be useless in a euph.

Double post due to TF "fornicatery".

Whoops.

Well between this forum and that other place we shall not name there is probably a pretty receptive audience if you can find a supplier again and place a volume order and want to offer them up for sale. I’d certainly would buy a couple. I’ve been using a variety of brushes from American Science & Surplus which is local to me. Apparently used in labs. Not ideal, but better than a poke in the eye.

I have a white plastic “Conn” snake that has a baritone end and a tuba end. No idea how old it is, but it was being sold as NOS from a music store going out of business.

What you want is a large cleaning snake. I can really can't find them either anymore, and they were rare in the past.
You know what I do though: I slosh mineral oil in the slides, dump it back out, and then every two or three months I jet hot water through them, and nothing really has stuck to the interiors of them. Even though there might be light sludge in them, it's not stuck.

This spring I ordered J. Meinlschmidt Hydro Jets (both M1 and S1 to also clean euphs and baritones) from Thomann. They work so well that I may never use a normal snake again. In part because good snakes are hard to come by. I have ~10 and don't much like any of them.

Can the M1 size be inserted into the mouthpiece receiver , and pushed all the way through the machine on a rotary tuba ?

@the elephant I just saw this on HornGuys' website. They have the same snake marked for trumpet, french horn, and trombone (ie it seems from their website that they are four different sizes and 3 different prices (tbn and horn are priced the same)):

https://hornguys.com/collections/care-c ... tuba-snake

It is a one-size-fits-all "baritone" and tuba brush. Strictly unsat. I can get that size at any local music store. I want the one they used to sell, which has 1.25" brushes. The one linked above is too small to engage a large bore tiba slide tube, much less apply actual pressure to scrub out the gunk. Might as well use a trumpet snake.

Thanks, though.

LittleJon1 wrote: Mon Sep 01, 2025 2:42 pm Can the M1 size be inserted into the mouthpiece receiver , and pushed all the way through the machine on a rotary tuba ?

My guess is yes, but I've only used it on 4+1 piston/rotary tubas. It certainly fits through the lead pipes on my tubas.

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Not what you’re asking for, but in the past I’ve used a bassoon boot joint strap to clean the valve section of a tuba

tubaing wrote: Tue Sep 02, 2025 8:33 am Not what you’re asking for, but in the past I’ve used a bassoon boot joint strap to clean the valve section of a tuba

Of course I meant “swab” not strap

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je wrote: Sun Aug 31, 2025 8:04 pm This spring I ordered J. Meinlschmidt Hydro Jets (both M1 and S1 to also clean euphs and baritones) from Thomann. They work so well that I may never use a normal snake again. In part because good snakes are hard to come by. I have ~10 and don't much like any of them.

Houghton Horns has these, and bloke has a family connection, so he might be able to get details on the appropriate use of these in a tuba.

Just looking for a snake, folks. Thanks very much, though. Snake with 1.25" nylon bristles, between 4 and 6 feet long.