Posted by RD on March 11, 2003 at 13:44:46:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Buying first tuba posted by Rex Roeges on March 11, 2003 at 13:10:35:
I agree. Ideas get refined and crystallized when they are challenged, as long as the focus is on the ideas and not on the personalities.
I also agree that not everyone should play a BBb just because they are cheap. For a restarter horn for a returning BBb player, though, they are the most sensible approach, it seems to me. Some restarters played Eb in their youth, and start back with an Eb. That's as it should be.
An advantage is that if they already know BBb fingerings, they have available very good tubas that don't require a "serious investment." But it's still a good investment, because they'll be able to sell it later if they choose and end up paying very little for the equipment they need to get started again. The risks are really quite small, so perhaps we spend too much time trying to pick "the perfect" horn, because we call it "a lifetime investment". It would only be a lifetime investment if the resale value of all tubas was zero.
I buy tubas that I think I'll like. I keep the ones I like and have sold the ones that didn't work for me. On the ones I've sold (one of which was bought as a demonstrator--so there weren't all old), I've lost 3%. Heck, my retirement portfolio took a bigger hit than that the last few years. It's a perfectly good strategy if you have the cash flow to speculate. Over the years, I've migrated to the horns that seem perfect to me (though my definition of perfection is not static). It's a lot more fun to trade your way up to the perfect horn than to put all that pressure on the first acquisition.
Rick "who still won't sell his Miraphone" Denney