Having read some fairly realistic accounts. I assure you that you would not have wanted to live as royalty hundreds of years ago in Europe or anywhere. Horrible food, urine and fecal odors (in castles and palaces), disease, etc.MikeMason wrote: Fri Jul 04, 2025 11:27 am Regarding housing inflation: I’d be curious to see inflation by square footage and level of luxury. Austere/ middle / luxury. I think,but am not sure, this is a part of the problem. If royalty from 1-300 years ago could see us, they would be astonished and switch places with us, I bet.
We have not sold any of the JP Yamaha clones yet nor seen one up close.
If they're like all the other JP stuff that I've sold, it's able to be drop shipped from the warehouse without seller inspection. That's why I sell this brand, because I don't want to have to fool with anything other than giving someone a good price on something, as I do tons of repairs, sell other things, and play music as a combination of what I do for a living, and the better part of two decades ago decided that brick and mortar and physically having to display for sale merchandise is for the birds (certainly now that civilization has pretty much come to an end and thievery and vandalism rule of the day).
In my opinion, the JP clones of the Yamaha marching brass are superior to yamaha, because JP pistons are well fitted stainless steel pistons and the hard cases are remarkably durable. I have found that Yamaha marching brass pistons - though well fitted - are nickel plated and lead soldered (not brazed) together. The Yamaha cases are also under-engineered, in my opinion. Needless to say, pricing-wise Yamaha is really quite proud of their stuff.
One thing that some people don't understand is that there are multiple (actually many) factories in China that make musical instruments and just because they see a Yamaha clone sold by one importer, it doesn't mean that another importer's Yamaha clone is made in the same place and is the same instrument built to the same standards. Actually what Jonathan says about Jinbao (a single huge manufacturer) is true. They build stuff to the standards of various reseller companies who buy stuff from them, even though they are one huge place.
JP's diversity of tuba products isn't as strong as Eastman or Jinbao, but to my eyes and hands (even though I'm biased being a JP dealer) the JP build quality exceeds that of the others... So JP loses sales due to lack of product diversity, but I don't get emails from people who do buy them complaining about this, that, and the other.
All of that having been said, if someone's looking for a brand new pt-15 like instrument or a brand new 2250 like instrument or a 621 like instrument that is problem-free and only marked up a few hundred bucks over dealer cost, I might be your guy.
