For sale on eBay:
click here

Silver 3-valve compensating B flat tuba
– additional information

Tuba in back garden. A few dents visible in this shot

The bell is in pretty good shape. There is a neat plated mend in it, indicated by the arrow. Also shown,
hands of sister-in-law of the late music-teacher whose pupils will benefit from the sale proceeds

Imperial Model / "Solbron" (Registered) Class A / Trade Mark Boosey / Compensating Pistons
Boosey & Co Makers. London / 118576 / British Throughout

Valves and compensating tube-work

The brass extensions, professionally inserted to bring this 1920s' instrument down to modern-day concert pitch (A=440 hz), may be seen

View from the other side of the valve-block. There's a small ring of black sticky tape, as shown. I haven't taken it off
and I don't know what's under it, but if there's a leak, I suppose it can't be very serious if the cure was this simple.
Someone has suggested it was just to protect the pipe, when a movable lyre-box was clamped on. I don't know.

Another shot showing that piece of insulating tape, and the fixed
lyre-box below (whose screw is missing)

The pistons removed

Valve block where the pistons aren't. I haven't made any attempt to clean inside

This is the most conspicuous dent – an Achilles heel of tubas that topple over on cobbled squares after a silver-band recital

This shot shows the only major flaw in the silver plating

The tuning slides. I believed they were all free-moving – but on the occasion of taking this photo there was one that didn't want to budge.
I didn't try to extract it just for the picture: safer to leave that job to someone who knows what they are doing

The slides that slid

Mouthpiece, and photographer reflected in sliver-plating, which seems pretty good for its age

Mouthpiece, presumably more modern than the instrument itself,
marked ‘B&H Standard, made in England’.

... and again

A number of small dents visible to the left-hand side of this shot; but it was last sounded by a tuba-player
on 29 August 2011, and it sounded good and sonorous. 'A free-blowing instrument,' he told me