Posted by Joe S. on November 19, 1999 at 00:20:03:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Disconnected tuba bells posted by Joe S. No.2 on November 18, 1999 at 22:57:56:
Silver tubas are very pretty to look at, especially if one happens to like the way that silver looks. However, if the need arises to take an instrument apart in order to fix boo-boo's, the 1/2 of 1/1000 of an inch thick silver plating (Often, this is all that is electrically applied.) gets screwed up pretty badly in the areas of unsoldering and resoldering, due to solder being really attracted to silver when heated, and the necessity sometimes of heavy buffing in order to clean up "Whoops!" solder messes. (A few repair dudes really have "The Touch" and can avoid most of this mess, but not everyone lives close to one of these "soldering virtuosi".)
When an instrument simply has a clear lacquer finish sprayed over polished brass, if the lacquer gets burned from unsoldering/resoldering, one can buff away the burned lacquer, shine up the brass in that area, and spray some new lacquer over the effected area. (Quite a few tubas are coated with epoxy lacquer, which is quite - certainly not completely - burn resistant.) Not a perfect match, but at least one CAN PARTIALLY redo lacquer.
One canNOT effectively PARTIALLY redo silver plating.
As far as "sound" goes, I buy into 0% of these "Princess-and-the-Pea" - "lacquer-vs.-silver" posts that I have read. What does logic dictate as far as which of these following items having more effect on the tone quality produced: a different mouthpiece, thirty hours more of well-directed practice, or which type of micro-thin coating (if any) happens to be applied to an instrument that weighs approximately 20 lbs?
I probably sound like a big "fan" of lacquer. However, the York Eb that I "upgraded" from 3 to 5 valves AND the Holton 6/4 that I converted from a BBb 3 valve to a CC 5 valve BOTH ended up with new satin silver finishes. Why?...because I like the way it looks. :-)