This is a really old one that a school owns that's sort of far away..... maybe 2 hours away...actually one of those OLD Bach stencils. It's a small high school but a big facility, because the county up there has lost a lot of population.
This was another silver instrument that looks terrible, because a bunch of silver was worn off where the hand holds the thing.. It's REALLY a bad idea to buy silver plated instruments for schools. There we're all sorts of severe dents and things, but the only broken brace was the round flange on the bell bow that braces the mouthpipe receiver, but the mouthpipe itself - from the second valve brace - was bent up at a 60° angle and folded shut.
There's no way that I'm going to order a new one of these mouthpipes from Yamaha, wait forever, pay a fortune, and charge the school two fortunes for that part, so I was planning on cutting and splicing, but I noticed there were no cracks, so I entertained myself this afternoon by repairing the original mouthpipe and putting it back straight and round. I guess it didn't take that much longer than splicing in a new section - and I didn't break a sweat, so all is good.
They sent me one other one as well, which is a Blessing that was made in USA. Than silver on it looks much better, and it just has a bunch of failed braces and not as much damage - though the mouthpipe brace is loose on this one also and the mouthpipe curves down at about a 10° to 15° angle, but it's not folded. A good thing is that a band director (who went to school there still visits a lot and actually was a student of the long-time band director there) goes up to visit and he brought me the instruments and will take them back for me. I'm actually going to be closer to there playing that crazy Tippett Symphony #4 this weekend, but it's still a 2-hour round trip from there, plus the gas.
End of boring post. Let me know if you want to see boring pictures.
To me, marching instruments rank about as interesting - compared to all the rest of the western world's musical instruments - as ketchup ranks compared to all the rest of the world of food. The only one that was sort of cool was the flugabone, and they don't use those anymore.
