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I recently got a used Yamaha YCB-822 CC tuba, and I want to fancy it up a bit. I am looking online for quite a bit but I'm unable to find any nice-looking finger buttons for my horn. I am looking for something with colorful stone inlays. Any links or information would be very helpful for my search. Thanks for helping!

I have seen harrelson trumpets make custom buttons and valve caps for a tuba. He says he has a watchmaker in Germany? Make the inlays. Has only done a couple sets for tuba. Extremely pricey. If you lots of dough, call him. Some of the most amazing machining I have seen.

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Martin Wilk?

Keith Polito also does this.

There’s this gentleman Paul. He’s in the Boston area. Works for Shires, iirc.

I've put my initials in brass on two or three of my instruments. Part of the motivation was to take pictures of them and make people on this particular discussion list chuckle at the pictures, but the other reason was that thieves are probably so dumb that they don't know that my initials made out of brass are not part of the stock instrument, and putting those on my instruments makes them really easy to identify - in case those instruments are stolen.

I have >different< finger buttons on my one front-action piston instrument, but they're sort of anti-fancy, and I designed them to weigh less so that I can use lighter springs and achieve nearly the same return speed.

I've seen so many stock finger buttons with replaced pearls on younger players' privately-owned instruments (when they bring them in for repairs) that it's sort of like when young people wear certain kind of clothes or wear their hair a certain way to be different, yet it ends up making them all appear the same, rather than different.

When I replaced the plastic inlays on my yamaha buttons (onnmy Holton), I put the buttons in a vise, drilled 2 holes (slowly to avoid melting the plastic and gluing it harder), then inserted the needle nose pliers and twisted until the glue failed. Here is the link to the perfect fit. They probably have others that also fit. You might buy brand new sousaphone buttons (plastic inlay maybe $15 a piece for lacquer) since your 822 probably has real MOP and make a second set

https://mopsupplies.mobile034.com/p/942 ... -2mm-.html

I will add: To me, replacing a semi-premium material (mother of pearl) with a non-premium material (epoxy) is not an upgrade

I'm the person who always chuckles when people claim that they only care about the sound, but only say that after they've messed up their instrument in an accident. That having been said, anything done for the sake of cosmetics can't really be considered to be an upgrade. Circling back around to the first sentence that I typed, people like interesting and blingy cosmetics superimposed onto their instruments, and this should be obvious to all. Artistic ornamentation of musical instruments has occurred since forever.

If you haven't gone with any of the above-mentioned people, I could make some inlays for you! I own my own business modifying/repairing brass instruments and just got purchased a lathe that I've been itching to work with!

I personally like understated-yet-different-from-oem stuff like this.

I would have to go out to the shop to measure the diameter of Yamaha pearls, but these measure 18mm (.709")


https://www.jansjewels.com/18mm-Abalone ... 25166.html

(I also like paying prices such as these, rather than stupid high prices of stuff pre-mounted in oem fingerbuttons (after they've dug out the originals).

arpthark wrote: ↑Sat Dec 02, 2023 10:01 pm Keith Polito also does this.

As recently as 3 months Keith was no longer / taking a break from doing these - does this mean he's maybe returned to making them?