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What is this Sanders Custom tuba? Chinese? Czech?

https://chico.craigslist.org/msg/d/chic ... 03428.html

I vote Chinese

Looks like a Piggy? Custom Music used Cerveny/Amati tubas for a long time before going with Chinese manufacturers.

Rick “does not know” Denney

It's piggy sized, but that's where the similarities end

I think it's a 191 clone. Ed

Not a Piggy shape or wrap, though the outer dimensions seem to be close.

I think it may be one of the very early Chinese-made "Sanders"-branded horns, and probably needs to be avoided, as the early ones I have worked on had the notorious pot metal water key and finger button castings and other absolute junk, as well as the horrid internal tube end finishing and sloppy, incomplete joint work of that time period. These were the "Chinese tubas" we all balked at working on, warned you not to get, and generally excoriated as Commie Crap.

[Yes, they have improved by leaps and bounds, and I have owned a Chinese tuba that I bought on a lark. (It was excellent, in most regards, with some shortcomings that did not prevent me from using it at work on a regular basis. I am talking specifically about those instruments we used to refer to as TSOs, or Tuba Shaped Objects, and not modern offerings from companies that seem to G.A.S.]

Unless someone is willing to go try it out (and put a torch to the water keys) we can't really know its provenance and qualities.

I vote that no one's vote should count - other than @YorkNumber3.0's vote, because he is spot on and he is absolutely correct.

Quite a few years ago, I saw one of these things over in "nowhere" Arkansas probably 45 minutes away from Jonesboro in the Arkansas delta - a river town. A bass and tuba playing cop-by-night band-director-by day nice guy had one in his band room. I tooted on it and everything worked. It was a cheap playable version of a 191 exactly as the previous gentleman identified. I've never really liked the 191 tubas, but never hated them, and I didn't hate the not-quite-as-well-stuck-together knock off. What can I say? It's a tuba.

Whenever I see "Sanders" stuck on a tuba just for the sake of it, I think of Winnie the Pooh, who lived under the name of Sanders.

That had to have been some sort of private joke with Milne, and possibly so private that it was only a joke to him.