Are we becoming Cuba? (relating band instrument repairs to Cuban automobile repairs)

[bloke]

I'm straightening out a messed-up Chinese 6/4 tuba.
Frankly - comparing repairing the same types of damage - it's giving me fewer problems than would a made-in-the-last-handful-of-years 20K.

The stainless steel pistons (once I got the lime out of the bottoms of their casings) fit nicely (as do the stainless pistons on the JP knock-offs of King sousaphones), the slides fit as they should (other than student-damage), and etc.

Per typical, the young scholars smushed the upper #1 return bow (perhaps 75%) flat.

I have some brand-new Conn bows here that line up perfectly, but I chose to go ahead and repair the original.

- Conn bows are now pretty expensive.
- Conn bows aren't always available.

I'll also be repairing the (badly twisted and bent) lower mouthpipe tube (which - again - would otherwise be interchangeable with one made for a 20K).
I can probably repair it in 30 - 40 minutes, compared to a new Conn part would cost me (dealer cost) around $150 (silver/shipped, if in stock).

...so - these days, when so many instruments are Chinese, I'm sorta identifying with Cubans - who are keeping automobiles (made in the past on foreign soil) running for which there are either no parts, or for which parts (if made or aftermarket made somewhere) would be a tremendous amount of trouble to obtain.

skilz:
Frankentuba-building (over the years, as well as being determined to repair damaged instruments nicely enough to render them attractive to potential buyers) are likely what mainly prompted me to self-teach these skills, as well as building speed in the execution of them...not too dissimilar to the motives of Cuban automobile repair people: because they have to or need to.

[Heavy_Metal]

That's some pretty bad soldering.

[Schlitzz]

I've been through Beaufort.... Gingivitis.

[bloke]

That's some pretty bad soldering.

Of of my favorite expressions:

' ain't mine

1/" ' cause Chinese" isn't valid. There have been plenty of similar solder joints on German and American instruments I've had to disassemble.
2/ Much of this type of soldering is done by women (who are statistically better at focusing on small work, YET are put under a great deal of pressure to produce large quantities of work in small quantities of time).
- I made a nice sloppy mess (last night, when reinstalling), made sure that the flux ate that gap clean, and that solder bridged the gap.

Vertically divide the picture of the sousaphone's (silver) bow into four approx. four vertically equal parts, and that's about how deeply it was squished flat. (Upper return bows don't seem to function very well as sousaphone feet - ie. protecting the rest of the sousaphone against being scuffed by asphalt.)

Compared to the most recently-built 6/4 domestic sousaphones I've repaired, I would rate the overall build quality, (fit of slides and pistons, as well as the appropriateness of the thickness of the branches' sheet metal) of this Chinese 6/4 as "better".