I just picked up another school (which is really cool, because it's halfway between some other newish clients).
They showed me a couple of these things. Actually, they're pretty good, and (surely) way less expensive than King.
The pistons are typical Jinbao pistons, but they do go up and down, and – certainly compared to fifty years ago – King pistons are nothing to brag about, either.
Some of the bracing looks to be tenuous, but none of the braces were broken (though the top bell brace was jacked sideways).
The thing, though, is the goosenecks.
They are all trashed and covered with band-director tape.
I got the "We only have $XXX to spend, but can you fix these three bass clarinets and two of these three contras?" thing...
...so we agreed, of course.
but with the caveat being, "Oh yeah, and could you fix these three trashed goosenecks, and ALSO bring them back back stronger than they were when new?
...so (not wishing to give away too-too many free hours) I decided on a nickel tubing sleeve that ends where the bow begins and covers about 3/8" - 1/2" (??) of the receiver. Of course (besides un-fubaring it), I had to remove/reinstall the receiver, the brace, and the lyre box.
Anyway, time will tell if this is any more dolt-proof that it was before.
These schools are weird:
After we pick up a new one, we fix up all of their beat-up crap really well, each year they need less-and-less work, which frees us up to pick up more schools, in the meantime some of those schools end up with new band directors (who - ignorant - contract hacks to fix their stuff), their stuff gets all torn up (and crappily patched back together by hacks) again, they find out about us from others, and we end up getting those schools back.
bloke "weird cycles...probably why there's such a thing as 'death'...repeating cycles - after a while - become really boring"
something else stupid - related to getting old:
I found this tubing on a rack in the corner of the shop: 16mm o.d. and 17mm o.d. (telescoping, aka inside/outside) I have NO IDEA when the hell I bought it, and I JUST RECENTLY bought some of BOTH sizes for a project...when I had this $h!t sitting on that rack all along.
