Tubas, euphoniums, mouthpieces, and anything music-related.
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"Big deal" just means knowledgeable and competent, in this case.
It's more expensive and more risky to ship a 186 than a 13x13 amp (though heavy). If you came down here when the summer repairs are gone and on a day or two that I have no gigs... or at least they are at night or something... I'll be glad to work on a 186 while you are here.
Otherwise, I would be otherwise putting this little amp to use around twice monthly even before you might manage to get here, so I wonder if I could ship the amp to you and you could bring it back down here along with your 186 when the hottest weather is gone and all of the school repairs are back at the schools...??
We put up people who drive here from a distance and feed them, so all they lose are their fuel costs for driving... And we encourage people to come down here in their smallest vehicles to save gas, but that's up to them.
I've done here to Interlochen (back when I was much younger) in 12 hours flat. I drove at insane speeds that I would not recommend. If you live in southern Michigan (??), maybe you could actually get here in 12 hours flat at reasonable speeds that aren't much above the speed limits...??
(Hotels are nasty and expensive.)
extraneous information:
I sort of forgot that I have a Roland cube-60 ($30 pawn shop find during the most draconian portion of the economic shutdown) that works for bass if the volume is not turned up to 11. It's nowhere near as good as the 12-in polytone bass amp, but it might do until the polytone is made to work again. It would be amazing to have that old polytone working as it should. I actually have two OEM speakers for it. I have a heavy-ass Peavey with a black widow, and I even have a behemoth Woodson (same guts as Kustom) PA with two columns (4 X 10" + 4 X 10")... but there's no way that I'm dragging either of those to some little jazz combo gig.
(I actually use the PA to practice playing along with a recorded piano accompaniment or symphony orchestra, as it's all I have that can really crank as loud as those real instruments can actually crank without distorting.)
I think it would be really cool if you can get Wade's strobotuner fixed. I picked up one of those a long time ago and could never get the motor to work right. I later ended up with a Peterson with a little TV screen thing that works perfectly. The Peterson and the Woodson PA were actually stuff tossed in the pile with a whole bunch of band instruments I bought.
Not a problem! If you think the amp ship OK, I have no issue with that. I am actually in the upper peninsula of MI, and the northern part of that (lake Superior on 3 sides), so Interlochen is about 395 miles out . . . On my 186, it's playing pretty well, but was bought as a bargain horn, and is a bit ugly, and has some dents in the bottom bow and branches that the local guy can't get to, and I've been considering a refinish, so likely more than a couple days, but have not made the call. Were on on I-35, we travel back to TX for family stuff, but that's about it (and the only place I know on the way is Denton Big Brass . . . and, ironically, I lived about 15 miles from them before moving . . . ). Still kinda trying to decide what I want to do with it, cast, etc.
I'm glad to work on Wade's tuner as well if he wants to ship it. That circuit really is simple . . . and the main proprietary part (the motor) sounds like it is fine. (The key thing there is that it is a synchronous AC motor, and the note selector knob basically sets a tone generator to a pitch for the selected note, and that is amplified to drive the motor. If you still have yours, short of the motor being physically damaged, I would think that wouldn't be that bad either.
Now that I'm talking bass amps, I ought to dig one of those out as well. The organizer of our long lived comminity band seems to have gotten lazy this summer, as well as not telling anyone so that someone else could step in, so we aren't playing . . . grrrr . . . Got some friends who could probably use an electric bass player, so who knows?
Not to derail the thread…but if you do decide to go down to Blokeville and our driving anywhere through Northern Illinois to get there - I’ve got a 185 that needs to go down there, but medical issues are preventing me driving it down. It would love to hitch a ride I can chip in for gas too.
OK, sorry for going dark on this . . . trying to figure out schedules (and at some time, perhaps this should go to PM . . . ? ? ?)
@bloke Not sure what your schedule looks like, but looks like the next time that we have planned travel south would be in the Thanksgiving time frame. Not sure how your workload looks then (or willingness), but the ability to drop the 186 off for 10 days or so would exist then, or we can find another plan.
On your amp, no problem working on it at all. I'm thinking that if I get that sent up, it can either get shipped back, or brought when I drop the horn off. On $$$ for work, perhaps we can barter 186 repair for amp repair (although I'll likely end up owing you more) but it's a thought . . .
Let me know if this idea has even the slightest bit of viability, and we can hammer out details from there. (And I'll get some photos of the horn so that it's not just a big mystery . . . ).
This thread looks done so I'll assume I'm not hijacking it. I think I have asked this before but will try again.
Does anybody know where I can find a physical (not online, not cell phone, not computer) tone generator? Maybe I'm using the wrong name in searches, but the search engine keeps coming up with testing devices and elebendy-seven online generators. What I want is what I remember from way back when, which was a metal box with an ON switch and an integral speaker, not very big, and a single large knob you could vary the output frequency / pitch with. To listen to, not to test equipment with. At the time it was called a tone generator. It was maybe 8 inches tall, six inches wide, four inches deep. It put out a sine wave, maybe other waves, but what I remember is a sine wave. It could only produce a drone, and I used to use it training myself to find A440 out of nowhere. That type of thing seems to have disappeared into the overly complex electronics of today.
Mary Ann wrote: Sat Jul 05, 2025 9:49 am
This thread looks done so I'll assume I'm not hijacking it. I think I have asked this before but will try again.
Does anybody know where I can find a physical (not online, not cell phone, not computer) tone generator? Maybe I'm using the wrong name in searches, but the search engine keeps coming up with testing devices and elebendy-seven online generators. What I want is what I remember from way back when, which was a metal box with an ON switch and an integral speaker, not very big, and a single large knob you could vary the output frequency / pitch with. To listen to, not to test equipment with. At the time it was called a tone generator. It was maybe 8 inches tall, six inches wide, four inches deep. It put out a sine wave, maybe other waves, but what I remember is a sine wave. It could only produce a drone, and I used to use it training myself to find A440 out of nowhere. That type of thing seems to have disappeared into the overly complex electronics of today.
I think this is what you are talking about.
The Conn LectroTuner produces a very loud A or Bb as a sine wave or (I think) a sawtooth wave (two waveforms can be produced, for certain). And it matches the original tuner like my ST-2 (the ST-1), which was the same crinkle paint, but black, with the same leather strap as a handle. It is tunable for several A schemes, like from A=435 to A=445… or something like that.
This one does not work, but they are not too hard to fix if you have a good guitar amp guy who works on tube-driven gear. This one is about sixty bucks shipped.
Close but nope. My long ago boyfriend who was an electronics genius (and worked on rock bands' stuff as well as electronic organs) had one that wasn't to tune instruments. You turned a dial and got infinite variation in the pitch; I don't remember the range. But it told you what Hz you were at. I remember that because I always ended up at 438 when I was going for 440. Must have had a slightly flat A on the piano when I was growing up.
Do you mean possibly a signal generator or a function generator? I have a couple of antique-ish lab grade ones - an HP200 and an HP3310. They don’t have a built in speaker but otherwise sound like what you are describing.
From a quick look on the internet there are some modern ones that aren’t so awful much. The trick would be to get sufficient resolution and stability for what you want.
Of course there are myriad digital keyboards one could use to make a drone - I have a hunk of wood and some smaller pieces I use to do that on mine.
I also found this looking for “digital pitch pipe”
The second one, nope.
What Wade posted "looks like" my memory, but my memory might be off in the woods somewhere.
What I want it for: I want two of them, to teach people what beats sound like; set them up so they are a few Hz apart, let people hear the beats, let them fiddle with the knob on one of them to sync with the other and make the beats go away, show that the beat frequency is the indicator of how far apart they are in pitch, and demonstrate that they can do this with their instruments to get rid of the chandelier-rattling beats that occur so often in amateur groups because people have no idea what they are doing to cause that. Trumpets especially. I can't count the times I have seen a conductor "tune the trumpets" by having them play the same note and telling one or the other to raise or lower their pitch, until the beats disappear, without ever pointing out what is happening, and they never learn what is going on and so it never changes.
Oh, and they have to be cheap. The only other option I know of is two computers using "online tones" and that really isn't feasible. Two tone-generating boxes would work, but it seems not available any more, or if so too expensive.
You said you don't want phone apps, but there are phone apps that will do multiple (at least two) frequencies simultaneously.
The one on IOS that I have is "f Generator" - dual frequency support is a "Pro" ($9.99 one time) upgrade cost though. Even give you your choice of waveform (sine, square, triangle, something I don't recognize..).
I suspect that the reason it's hard to find standalone, analog waveform generators (other than expensive lab gear) now is that it's MUCH easier and cheaper to do it in software.
In my distant memory, what you’re asking for sounds like what some ham radio friends 50 years ago called oscillators. I don’t have any source for it, but maybe that will help your search.
I can chip in for gas too. 
