TubaForum.net

The new video from the Josef Lidl company.

Just to preface: I do not work for Lidl or for any other factory and I find the tuba video at the end is peaking the mic levels a bit...

However, I was recently at the Lidl factory to try their new tubas and I found the Moldau F-Tuba to be as good as the tubas made in Germany and far superior to the Eastman or Searman tubas that I tried back in Stuttgard in November last year. If one were looking for a new modern F-Tuba, this is an excellent option on the market.

Cheers from Berlin,
TheBerlinerTuba

Does Lidl make an Eb? I don't see anything in their listings..

I have a BBb Moldau and it's a beauty.
Beautiful, well in-tune, a joy to play.

The tubas from Lidl are a joy to play. We have two rotary F tubas in stock, one with the fifth rotor in the "typical" location before the first valve, and the second, with the fifth located after the fourth. One has a gold brass bell and the other sports all yellow brass construction and a nickel silver bell rim.

The 884 Deluxe BBb and CC models have been two of my favorites to play. The LBB-884 can be ordered in four or five valves.

We're working on a restock order since most of our models have been recently sold. If there's something specific you'd like to see/play in our showroom (or at a show), please let me know.

I'm in favor of every single tuba manufacturer staying in business, whether or not I like any, some, or all of their tubas.
Matt Walters has said that every tuba has someone's name on it, and I don't interpret that as a negative comment.

The only era of Czech tubas that SEEMED to be (but were not) so-called "crummy" were made a long time ago, and the only thing crummy about them was their linkage. Everything else was excellent.

It requires more craftsmanship (not less) to manufacture tubas out of thinner sheet metal. Whether playing characteristics are amazing, great, good, or fair, thinner sheet metal tubas are simply more luxurious, has less weight is luxurious.

I've noticed that Czech tubas of current manufacturer feature more nickel brass, whereas most older ones featured very little.
They certainly have a more upscale look today (in the eyes of some) but - truth be told - nickel brass weighs more than yellow brass.

I haven't had a chance to play any of the newer upgraded models of Czech tubas, but - if I ever pass through Cincinnati or Columbus when it's not two or three in the morning - I'd love to test them out.

I recently purchased a LBB701 from the shop in Cincinnati. Excellent service, excellent horn. The valves are like butter! They call it a 3/4 size horn, but it sure doesn’t play like it!

Great video!

I enjoyed the video.

But @bloke, nickel-brass or German silver has very close to the same density as plain brass. It may be very slightly higher depending on the alloy, but it’s within a fraction of a percent. Even metallic nickel is only a few percentage points mor dense than brass.

But it’s harder and more difficult to work, so I’m sure it seems denser.

My Czech tuba back in the day was not only thin but soft and needed hyper-care to avoid attracting dents. I didn’t notice it being lighter than a similarly sized 186. The linkages were redone by the importer with parts that were too light for the application and I had to replace them.

Rick “traded it for a 186” Denney

Yeah, typical nickel-brass is only a little bit heavier than brass alloys is not containing nickel, and/but being that nickel-brass a little bit more difficult to dent, we're finding that in Chinese and European instruments only a half millimeter thick - whereas some of the vintage American instruments which feature all brass inside and outside slide tubes - featured tubing that's somewhat thicker than a half millimeter. That said, the final version of the big Conn sousaphones respected the .734" bore, but the tubing walls were much thinner. Nickel brass slides mostly started appearing on European instruments within the last few decades, but I do believe that thinner gauge sheet metal and tubing (which was common with European tuba-family instruments for a long time) was and has been related to overall weight, and that (I believe) was and perhaps sometimes is related to carrying for marching.

Everything adds up, particularly when someone's trying (whether for some practical reason or some misguided reason) to get a 24 or 25 lb. tuba down to only about 19 lbs. or so.
(I'm pretty sure that my 32-in tall 19-inch bell Holton B flat tuba - even - with those thin wall aftermarket King-fitting Meinlschmidt pistons - weighs a little bit more than my Miraphone model 98, and - if it does not - I'm pretty sure it would, were I to remove those silly and fairly heavy brass initials from the main tuning slide of the 98...The initials on the Holton are smaller and made of much thinner brass, for whatever that information is worth in this sidebar.)

The final sidebar here has to do with the flooding of the market with various levels of quality/various levels of usableness copies of a one-off tuba made in the 1930s for the Philadelphia Orchestra's tubaist:
It's obvious enough to me (with very early pictures showing a very sharply etched fresh satin silver finish on the instrument discussed in this sidebar - actually appearing white in an often-seen picture) that this instrument suffered from having (sadly) had the holy crap buffed out of it at some later date. (Most people have no idea how much material must be sacrificed to rid an instrument of a satin finish - removing enough material to result in a glossy mirror-like finish.) In my personal opinion, that particular instrument has been devastated and (at least to me ~personally~ unless for resale) has no worth, as it's been structurally ruined (even though it might be mechanically sound. Attempting to match the current physical weight of that instrument with copies is a misguided pursuit, in my very opinionated (yet, I believe informed) opinion.