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This was a badly beaten Reynolds 5/4 body (model TB-11).

many dents, jacked-around slide tubes, no mouthpipe (no manufactured mouthpipe available), missing pistons, missing caps, etc.

I managed to turn the body back into something functioning and dent-free (with nice tight pistons with excellent plating) and I found an old silver Martin bell with the same collar size...

I believe @Dan Schultz may have given me one of the pistons - which I had Dave Secrist rebuild to a diameter that I specified (geez, I wish I'd asked him to make it .001" smaller ) prior to his retirement.

The inner (smaller) lower bow was rotten, but - miraculously - I had another one...but swapping them out was quite a chore.

...so: "tuba"

(way too many hours, though...)

Parts is Parts.

Nice work in getting a quality tuba into the hands of young 'un.

I noticed that tuning is slightly "curious", but then (besides remembering that these Olds/Reynolds 5/4 things DO sport curious intonation) I remembered that there are some $15,000 models with nearly identical tuning characteristics, so...

Other than a Weril (Yamaha YBB-105 knock-off) body and two or three small bore top-action valvesets from which to choose (to paste on to it, somehow), I believe I've just about exhausted my supply of "cheap tubas".

I even have an Olds fiberglass sousa headed out the door (as soon as the set of four detachable valveset braces arrives from Getzllied, Wisconsin).

Pretty nifty. I like the engraving on the Martin bell. Those were the days....

That's a great looking tuba!

There are a bunch of places in the body that look like they are still dented, but are not.
(outlines of the edges of former dents)

Since two of the (formerly sad) pistons (1& 3) were rebuilt barely too large for the casings, I was able to really obtain a good fit.
“ssssssssssssss…puuufff”
The second piston isn’t very worn at all, and its fit is also good.