TubaForum.net

New to owning our own instrument. Bought this tuba for my son when he left middle school and needed his own. I've been looking everywhere and going down rabbit holes, where not so many discussions take the gold into account.

You can see that the gold plating is wearing off, so I'm so afraid of using the wrong product or method to get rid of that tarnish. Last I read was to use tarni-shield and dab it on with your fingers, don't rub, let it dry, rinse it off?? It looks so beat up already - we need that tarnish off! TIA!

THERE IS NO GOLD ON THIS TUBA. First off, gold does not really tarnish. It darkens slightly, but it is valuable because it does not tarnish or corrode. And, if it were gold plated it would be astronomically expensive!

What you have there is the same brass that all brass instruments are normally made of. It was buffed at the factory to look like a mirror and then sprayed with a clear lacquer. Your lacquer is coming off or has cracked and allowed air to get beneath it so that the brass in those spots has a brown patina. What appears to be "silver" is actually an old repair, and the tin/lead solder was not completely cleaned off of the joint.

Retroactively plating a tuba in silver is thousands of dollars. To get one new from the factory with silver plating is probably about $1500 more than lacquered brass in many cases, today. To plate in gold over brass requires silver to be laid down first, I believe.

And gold is many times more expensive than silver.

Please do not hesitate to ask any other questions you may have. And post up some well-lit, focused, hi-res photos of specific things when appropriate. What you posted today was not bad at all.

By the way, what tuba model is that? Based on what you posted it looks to me like a Yamaha YBB-103/104/105, all of which are very decent tubas for youngsters.

Welcome to our community!

Wade

Oh, in rereading your post I see that you were advised to use 3M's excellent TarniShield. GREAT STUFF… for plated metal. It is what a lot of jewelers use on sterling and gold. It is popular amongst tuba players.

Your tuba is lacquered, so the best way to CLEAN the lacquer is Lemon Pledge wiped on and off with an old jersey cloth teeshirt or a cotton diaper. However, the tarnish on your horn is BENEATH the cracked lacquer. Stripping it off with a nasty, caustic chemical gel, re-buffing with a proper floor-mounted buffing machine, chemically degreasing the metal, and then spraying on new lacquer is the only way to remove it. You can't really do this at home.

There is not a lot you can do if the tarnish is under the lacquer. Now, if I am reading your photos incorrectly (which is very possible) I am right. However, if your tuba is not actually lacquered anymore in that area of the bell you can just use something like Brasso to remove the brown spots, but it will not look good when you are done.

This is fairly normal for tubas that have had major dent work done to them: the lacquer develops spider cracks in the lacquer when the metal is initially bent, and then MANY, MANY more when it is smoothed back out. All that area will eventually develop tarnish, and frequently the lacquer will flake off, exposing bare metal.

Don't worry. This is pretty much normal for horns like what you have. It is not going to damage it at all, as the patina protects the metal.

The easiest solution, if you think it is necessary to toss a lot of money at what is an inexpensive tuba, is to take it to a shop that does refinishing/relacquering work and have them buff the area, removing all the flaking, loose bits of lacquer, then degrease the area and spray on rattle can lacquer over what is there. It will continue to do what it is doing but it will look sort of nice for now.

Personally, I would not spend a dime on it. The buffing removes metal, and a ham-fisted tech will remove a LOT of metal. If a really skilled tech were to strip and relacquer this for it it would still be lighter/thinner in the end, and the first time you have dents removed the process would begin again. There is nothing wrong with what you are showing in your photos.

Thank you for all of the information. This is the reason that I wanted to post pictures. I've gone back and forth on what this stuff is and what to do about it. This is a picture of the whole tuba. We weren't as concerned with how it looked when we bought it, but now he is going to play in a youth symphony orchestra, and I feel like it just looks too beat up. Maybe my expectations are too high. We will try the lemon pledge and see if maybe that helps a bit. Thanks!

Pledge will not remove the brown at all. It will not alter the look of the horn in any way whatsoever. It is just a good way to take care of the lacquer that is still on the horn. It only removes gunk and fingerprints and such, just like what it does for furniture.

The appearance of the tuba is not bad at all and is completely unimportant in this context. There is nothing at all special about a youth symphony over any other sort of ensemble. (I play in a symphony for a living.) Don't give your child some sort of head complex about their tuba; it's fine. Just allow them to have fun with this experience and don't make them feel bad about their tuba. That you have purchased a tuba for your child at this age is quite unusual, to be honest. They are way ahead of the game, here. Let them enjoy what they have.

What I *would* be concerned about is that the brace between the bell and top bow is completely missing, and you need that or the leadpipe could be destroyed and the 1st valve badly damaged. Take it to a shop and have them make something to fit that space. It looks like it was poorly reassembled (not the quality of the joints, but the alignment of the tubing) so that the gap is far too wide. Rather than having the bell and bottom bow messed with to correct the gap to accept the brace that is made to go there, maybe just having one bent or otherwise adjusted to fit the gap would be faster and less expensive. This tuba has had a LOT of work done to it in the past.

Best of luck to your kid. I hope they enjoy their experience in the orchestra, which is very different from a band. (In a band they play all the time, but in an orchestra they have to sit out a lot, so it can be quite boring unless the student is really excited by orchestral music and the sounds of a string section.)

the elephant wrote: ↑Sat Nov 12, 2022 12:46 pm Retroactively plating a tuba in silver is thousands of dollars. To get one new from the factory with silver plating is probably about $1500 more than lacquered brass in many cases, today. To plate in gold over brass requires silver to be laid down first, I believe.

And gold is many times more expensive than silver.

Love to look at those vintage H.W. White advertisement for BBb bases from the 20s and 30s. There was usually a list of prices and options in one of the lower corners. The 4v recording bell model in polished brass went for $250 and the "Artist Special Gold Hand Burnished" model goes for $660. Would love to get into the "Wayback Machine" with a few dollars and get one of those... Alas, more chance of winning the Powerball than have that happen...

That amount of money – according to at least one inflation calculator – is about the equivalent of 12,000 bucks today.