TubaForum.net

Some instrument or component makers do NOT sell to individuals.

If you have found companies that are particularly nice to work with — or the opposite — feel free to list them here, along with contact info (if you care to share this — some won't, and I understand why this is).
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Right now I am dealing with Lexi at Edwards Trombones. She is not one of the people who design or make anything but is a sales rep who answers the phone and copes with oddball questions from oddball tuba players.
Lexi Wachveitl
lexi@edwards-instruments.com
(800) 562-6838

She gets my vote for Best Internet Sales Question Answerer for today. Thanks, Lexi!
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I get a ton of help (albeit slowly) from Eva at Miraphone. I have only ever exchanged emails with Petra Waxenberger or with Christian himself on a few occasions. Eva has been my go-to point-of-contact at Miraphone for years; she is a real trooper and has done a fantastic job of accomodating some of my more esoteric parts requests.

Eva Staudinger
eva.staudinger@miraphone.de
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I have just about given up on Conn-Selmer as I do not purchase parts from them often enough to stay on their list of companies they sell to. They booted a bunch of folks off when we did not knuckle under and spend a certain amount of money by a certain date. I won't be coerced into buying crap I neither want nor need just to keep my wholesale price access for one year, and then have to do this again the next year. Sorry. I'll buy or make what I need from now on if it looks like the stuff you make. OFF MY LIST!
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I like the Instrument Innovations folks a lot, too. I think one of the owners is a woman named Kim. She runs their Facebook page, too. Very nice and helpful.

Kim Olsen
info@instrumentinnovations.com
(262) 723-2217
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I have also bought a lot of used parts (from prototype horns that they have since taken apart) as well as a lot of new stuff from Mike at Tuba Exchange, but he may no longer work there, so TE is sort of a crapshoot. They have a small (and dwindling) supply of Jin Bao nickel silver braces that are preassembled (for their Miraphone knock-offs) that they want to get rid of (since they no longer sell these horns). If you get braces from one of the normal importers of they come as a post and two flat disk feet. There are no guide pins on the post ends and no holes in the center of the disks, so silver soldering these together required both hand fitting and then very careful alignment in the silver soldering jig or the feet will go on uncentered or off to one side. Having access to some of these preassembled ones that they ordered from JB to keep in their shop so they could more easily service these horns is a nice thing. I have a big bag of these nickel silver non-adjustable braces that I dip into on occasion. They are a LOT less expensive than the real ones from Germany.

Then there is Ed Stregge at Badger State Supply, who can sometimes locate something that is hard to otherwise find, but he charges a LOT for his parts. Ed has sold me a lot of rotary valve units, bell garlands, a bottom bow, and bell, and tons of linkage parts over the years.

Allied Supply is still the king of parts here in the US, but with Craig retired the tenor of the telephone help has changed somewhat. They are still helpful, but Craig was great. I am glad he is in Arizona enjoying his retirement, but I miss him being there to help me discover whatever it is that I need to make something work. He was a walking encyclopedia of the parts they sold.

Who do you buy stuff from? Are there any eBay sellers who consistently have good new or used stuff? Don't share if you think this sort of info is *secret* or you think that others should have to research forever to find out stuff because that is how you did it. That is fine. This thread is for people who like to share and help one another. I hope some of this helps some of you, and I hope to gain from the information that ends up being shared here. If anyone wants to know something like this in more detail please PM me. If it is something I am truly reticent about sharing I will be honest and tell you why. Otherwise, whatever I know I will share.

Additions with no info…

Jürgen Voigt
Something has changed and now it says that they do not ship to my address. I think this happened in the past and I had to email them directly and purchase and pay that way. I am not sure I have ever been able to complete a transaction on their web store page. But I have bought a lot from them over the years. Whatever. They make great stuff.

J. Meinlschmidt
Fantastic "gold standard" rotary valves. They do not like to sell to anyone but businesses with Tax ID Numbers. I told them that in the US a Sole Proprietorship does not receive a TIN but uses the owner's SSN, so I now have an account with them, but I have never used it. They are the least well set up of these companies to cope with questions from an English speaker or for helping you find the part number of something you want to buy. They sell to large makers who have accounts that outline exactly what Items they buy, on a schedule, like a subscription service. Some fat dork in Mississippi trying to get a price for a top loader with a carbon fiber rotor @ 22 mm and @ 19 mm is not something with which this company is adept. Great stuff, though. One day I will drop some serious cash on these people, but until then I will just keep on using up the valves I have here.

Melton
Yeah, good luck getting anyone there to return an email sent via their online component store. I have emails from years ago that have never been answered. I am also fairly certain that they are re-selling a lot of that stuff in order to prevent some of the more curious amongst us from digging up who supplies them with certain parts. I do not think they make much of the stuff in the web store in-house. Not sure. I have never actually been able to buy anything directly from them.

Martin Seibold
These guys make the famous "Minibal" (just one "L" at the end, please) links we seem to like so much. Buying directly from them is rather tough and you need to be patient. However, they sell these in MANY sizes, so you can just ask them which ones they sell to Miraphone, et al and they will tell you, which is nice. What is not nice is that the high price of these are set by them, and it is the same, more or less, through them, so buying directly involves a small saving that is more than offset by international shipping charges. If you need something specific go to them. If you just need what is already for sale here in the US then go that route. However, if you want to manage and broker a "group buy", you can get a nice discount per link if you buy in bags of 100 or more. But a bag like that would cost you over two grand, so maybe not…

https://www.minibal.de

There are more, but some of them no longer exist, like Kanstul. I am not up to date on which companies have shuttered or who have decided to no longer sell to individuals.

Eastman seems like it would be okay to deal with. I got a parts diagram for a EBB632 and a quote, but I lost interest.

Andy Smith has taken over Sonia's (retired) job at Conn-Selmer.
He's a tuba player...
He's been courteous/helpful/capable, and I rarely have to look up a part #, whereby simply a picture or a (in my mind) decent description almost always suffices (as with Sonia, which made ordering parts from her very easy as well).
That having been said, if there are choices in a part (choices about which I might not be aware), he'll bring those to my attention as well.

The last set of things received required a three-month wait, but it was some Bach bass trombone parts...and who knows how often they get around to making those things (??)
If a school chooses to take a professional-quality delicate specialty instrument outdoors (ok...How about a Selmer, Paris low-C bass clarinet, as another possible absurd example..??), they should expect damage, and a considerable wait - to have it repaired.
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Jupiter:
Those guys over in Nashville are VERY nice people - and the people given the job of doling out parts strive to do their best - but they don't seem to stock very much...and (months after I've fabricated parts - which never came during the entire marching season) parts finally begin to trickle in...one-at-a-time (shipped individually - often in boxes 40X larger than needed - at their expense..ex: a sousaphone upper mouthpipe receiver in something that could accommodate a pair of - ok... - work boots). I go ahead and "stock" the parts (again: since Jupiter doesn't seem to), because (next year: after bands have torn up the same Jupiter stuff) I'll - most likely - use them. (Is it just me, or is anyone else finding their new-era stainless steel pistons - as well as their newer-era sandwich valve guides - to prove to be even more problematic than the older-style stuff? Maybe, I'm just losing my touch...??)

Contact info for both?

I never came into contact with a "Sonia" or any other employee at C-S, only the Parts Manager himself, who I think was called Harold? Whatever, he was rather distant and took some time to get back to me, usually with answers to questions asked him by some other person and not what I had requested. He was the one who ran me and thousands of others off when we did not order the arbitrary amount of stuff (thousands of dollars worth) to stay on their wholesale price list. "If you don't spend at least $XXXX by XX/XX/XXXX date you will lose your account with Conn-Selmer." I have a lot of stuff I was planning on buying from them, but they lost that money. I won't be forced to spend what I do not have on things I do not want.

Now that Andy is there things might be better. I need to contact him (if you pass me his contact info) to see if this Mandate from the Parts Gods has been rescinded. I would *love* to give them my money again, but won't be bullied into it.

Also, I have never worked on Jupiter horns away from the old music store back in the 1990s, so I have no idea who to call. Info would be great if you wish to share it with me, here or in a PM. Here, in this thread, would be better, but I understand if you don't want to do that. Except for the fact that they are so easy to work with, I would not have posted the Miraphone email.

Thanks.

When I needed B&S parts, I contacted Bob Tucci directly after a bit of radio silence. Parts got shipped shortly after

asmith

daniel.barton

+5,000 for Kim and Mike Olsen of Instrument Innovations. I have a custom constructed Bach 50 bell section outfitted by Benn Hansson out here in Seattle. Their bass axial with a D plug-in rotary. I recently upgraded the bell to a Butler carbon fiber 50 bell.

Last couple of years I've been starting to have a lot of water key failures, and I've been replacing them with Pollard water keys from Jerry Pollard in Georgia.

Pollardwaterkey@gmail.com

the elephant wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 10:52 am
Now that Andy is there things might be better.

There is a $500 fee to open a account.

No fooling?

“fee” or “minimum initial order” ?
(It’s not too difficult to come up with 500 bucks of stuff to buy from Conn-Selmer. Four or five Bach Strad’ inside slide tubes for trombones would do it.)

I had no idea about this, as I’ve been buying stuff from them ever since they’ve been a whole bunch of individual companies in Elkhart, Indiana; Elkhorn/Kenosha, Wisconsin; Eastlake, Ohio; and Abilene, Texas.

An accessories jobber, KAMAN, is one with which we (as we prefer others) don’t do business with very often. A few years ago, we needed (wanted) some things from them, and hadn’t purchased anything from them in several years. They asked us to buy a certain dollar amount of things to reestablish our account. It wasn’t $500 at that time (with them), but - well - we simply bought a buttload of that one thing, and still have plenty at this time…YET, will probably (eventually) when use them up before we croak, so…

LargeTuba wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 4:51 pm

the elephant wrote: ↑Tue Dec 14, 2021 10:52 am
Now that Andy is there things might be better.

There is a $500 fee to open a account.

I am in need of valve guides for Big Mouth Brass Tuba Model J7844LQ - I am told these were made by JinBoa. Any ideas on where to get valve guides? I already tried Yamaha and others and they do not fit the same.

twinvillagemusic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 08, 2024 12:45 pm I am in need of valve guides for Big Mouth Brass Tuba Model J7844LQ - I am told these were made by JinBoa. Any ideas on where to get valve guides? I already tried Yamaha and others and they do not fit the same.

This may be a long shot, but I have had some success dealing directly with Chinese instrument wholesalers on Ali Baba. This was a couple years ago, but I was able to get quotes for random parts through them. Look up "Shandong Crown Musical Instruments Co." and try to contact Vicky.

Alternately you might look up "Frater Music" and ask for Jessica. I am not sure which wholesaler deals with the former BMB stuff now.

Hope this helps.

Post pictures of the top of the valve and of both sides of the guide. There may be something adaptable.

[1] Andy Smith is long gone from C-S, and the replacement person is Rachel Simpson.

[2] She doesn't seem to do particularly well answering emails, so I just call her.

[3] (I suspect there really needs to be two Rachels, which would explain why emails aren't answered very quickly.)

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[4] I'm pretty sure the older lady(ies) out west at Yamaha have retired (Candy Taylor, and the lady who filled in for her when on vacation). I'm dealing with Justin now.

[5] I have no idea whether they sell to the public...I ain't very public...ok...unless there's a gig.

[6] Yamaha does have retail/dealer prices, so maybe (??) they do. Otherwise, see [5]