- not in C
- not York
- no fifth valve
This was a squashed-flat ancient YBB-103 (y'all seem to love these, 'cause they're front-action) that belongs to a middle school in Memphis. Actually, it's the most popular public middle school in Memphis...whereby people stand in line at the schoo-boa - in case there is some space available.
There were/are a dozen beat-up/non-playable tubas in a practice room. (One of them is actually a 186).
This is a new account for us...(Actually, our kids went to this school. They walked through a wooden gate in our back yard right onto the campus.)
He (new band director there - either this year or last year, yet we've known him for quite a few years) gave us three to start out with. This was the worst of the three, and all of these first three are 3/4 Yamaha tubas. (One of them is a 105, and two of them are these 103's.) This one was the WORST of the three, so I started on it first. I started working on it after lunch (and - truth be told - after some screwing around after lunch) and finished it in time for a slightly late dinner.
All of the body parts were smushed and creased...bell, bottom bow, top bow, next bow, and next bow after that.
All of the slides were stuck badly.
None of the pistons would go up-and-down.
One of the stems was the wrong one (leftover from before the conversion someone did to the new-style valve guides), so that valve would not have depressed far enough...and an old finger button was busted off in that stem anyway.
The main tuning slide bow (barely larger than .600" bore) was a caved in.
The l-o-n-g/skinny mouthpipe tube was flattened bottom-to-top
Even the freakin' thumb ring was mashed in so much that not even a young scholar's thumb would have fit in it.
It's in pretty good shape, now. Everything works, and it's got that monstrous BLATT !!!! for which these are known.
I charged $500 for this one...I dunno whether I hit my $100/hour routine target/objective (minus typing up quotes, minus pick-up/delivery, minus waiting to be paid...BUT I always combine errands when doing pick-ups/deliveries), but I think I may have...as I just kept pluggin' at it.
I only un-soldered/re-soldered two slide tubes and one strap ring. Most of these school tubas LOOK like they need to be taken all apart, but I rarely take anything apart (via bloketrix™), and - per usual - I sat in my chair for 99% of the time I worked on it.
It's really in pretty decent shape, now, and - when resting on the bell (per may standards) - it doesn't rock back-and-forth.
Mrs. bloke is working on three flutes and a bassoon (bassoon done) for a private K-12 school near this public middle school.
Hopefully, we'll finish around the same time, and we can combine those two deliveries (maybe?) with one or two other Memphis errands.
(With all of the federal law enforcement over there now - via Trump) it's so odd to jump on the inner loop freeways whereby everyone is ACTUALLY going 55 mph (rather than 85 mph). Also, the murders seem to have dropped down to only one every other day or so, rather than multiples per day.
re: mismatched finger button:
I didn't happen to have but one of those super-vintage YEP-321 euphonium/YBB-103 finger buttons, but I DID find one (larger/intermediate plain-top diameter) which was used later on the 3/4 instruments. (When I picked it up, it only had one finger button...the one on the #2 piston stem.)
I didn't chem-clean this, but everything works well...
Oh yeah: Way down here, we can see the aurora borealis, tonight...' starting to show some purple up north...
Look over on that folding table...Mrs. bloke decided to bring those three flutes in here to work on them, rather than out in her workroom.
This is the best my $90 android could do without turning off the sodium light on the front of the barn...
