Putting wheels on a gig bag

[Mary Ann]

(original deleted)
Turns out that the backpack straps work to hold the gig bag to the collapsible hand truck, and I can even lay the whole thing on the floor and unzip it (clamshell) while attached, although it's a bit picky. Pretty sure it will fit in the car this way too, so problem solved for free. All I have to do is be able to get it in and out of the hatch in the car, and not fall down a flight of stairs with it in tow. That's why elevators were invented.

[bloke]

Gard makes bags with wheels.
They seem sorta pricey to me, but I need to continue to remind myself that our money is no longer worth anything...
ie. (narrative) "Prices are now double, due to 8% inflation."

[GC]

The Gard wheelie bags are quite heavy even without the horn.

[bloke]

Decently-built bags often weigh more than people think…which is why I’ve just decided to go ahead and go with molded cases.
Even when I was in the early stages of healing from my hernias, there were/are ways to use leverage to get the instruments into the car without actually lifting the instruments in their cases. (When I was about 23 years old, I watched a small woman get a refrigerator off the back of a pickup truck - after I purchased it from her, and she delivered it to me. Ever since then, I’ve done some thinking about how to move things around without having to actually use much physical strength.) As far as getting them from the car to the venue, I’m not beyond dropping them off inside the stage door and then parking. Further, if I’m not allowed to park by the stage door or even drive up to the stage door, there’s nothing wrong with taking the instrument out of the case and carrying it from the car to the venue on my shoulder. People my age - who went to Interlochen in the summers - will remember seeing Rex Connor carrying his big Meinl-Weston around on his shoulder. (I don’t know if he even had a case or bag at all… neither really became a “thing“ until around that time, when a couple of places started offering bags. I recall buying a Yamaha tan-yellow almost-unpadded bag - $40 - for my 186 c. 1974, though I had already bought a wood case. A couple of years later, I decided to just use the case and not the bag – even though my teaching studio was on the fifth floor of a building with no elevators.) Collecting dents in the bags in transport is the thing of which I’ve grown weary, and all of my bags are high-end California-made bags. No bag - regardless of how well-made and how much padding is used - is a hard case.
As I’ve stated in other threads, two or three of my instruments – if I can find the time – are in line to be completely picked over and refinished by me. Once that happens, I’d like to minimize the boo-boos. After I purchased this really big handmade Miraphone B-flat – which came with a Winter case - I realized immediately that I will never be willing to tote that thing around in a bag, which made me start to reconsider how I’m carrying around my other instruments. (I bought a California-made - bag back when I had a Chinese cimbasso, but – after I built myself a remarkably good-playing one – I now have a hard case which I ALWAYS use with it. Maybe that says something, yes?)

[Mary Ann]

It came with a new-looking Protec clamshell bag that weighs, according to my bathroom scale, seven pounds. Add that to the 15 pounds the tuba weighs, and the height of the thing over my head while still hitting me below the butt -- actually not particularly safe for me to try to haul it around that way. I could carry a 22 pound backpack full of books, but this huge thing towering over my head and hanging down my back, is not particularly safe. I have a "delicate" physical frame, always have, and I have stories similar to your lady with the refrigerator in doing things that men would try to muscle. Since I've never been able to muscle stuff, I am creative and also know my limits.

If I knew how to post pictures I'd show you the one with it on my back, which looks like a midget trying to carry a BAT. The NStar, because it was shorter, was not such a problem even though it may have weighed about the same. I was in better physical shape then, too. But -- I am having SUCH fun with this one, I shall persevere!

[bloke]

Could Tom Rice (or a luggage or shoe shop) lower the upper fastening places for the straps, so it fits on you better?

(...and so what if they have to stitch through the interior lining to accomplish that.)

I'd rather have something stick up over my head (even) higher, than (as ProTec bags are wont to do) slap me in the bohonkus - every time I take a step.

[Mary Ann]

I'm quite happy with what I came up with; easy to pull and I don't have to take it apart to get the tuba out of the case. I still just have to make sure I can hoist it into the car, but assume I can.

[Nworbekim]

I'm quite happy with what I came up with; easy to pull and I don't have to take it apart to get the tuba out of the case. I still just have to make sure I can hoist it into the car, but assume I can.

the 5/4 i played for a while was huge. it had a soft "hard case" with wheels but they didn't roll well anywhere it was the least rough so i bought a cart that folds and bungeed the horn/case onto it. that made moving it easier, but to get it into the back of the suv, i took the cart off and put them in separately.

[bloke]

If they could just make gig bags air-tight, people could fasten a two-quart helium canister under the dash of their vehicle, fill up the bags (schrader valve, etc...or presta - if a European-made bag) and easily tote (as long as no big gusts of wind, etc.) their instruments into their venues.

More well-equipped venues, of course, would offer backstage helium dispensers ($1 vend...??) for returning instruments to vehicles.

bloke "who offers sensible solutions"