My New Tuba

I suppose you could say that I have an old-school British brass player's approach to equipment. I settled on the tuba which suited my needs best (a Besson BE-983) and found the mouthpiece which suited me best (thanks Andy Grappy!), and I've stuck with that. I'm very much a believer in not fixing things which aren't broken. That instrument has been my main tuba and has served me fantastically well in the wide range of music I am involved in (see here).
Maybe once or twice a year, I might have popped into a tuba shop to try some different models, and I was very pleased never to have found anything which I wanted to play for more than about 5 minutes. That was until I had a blow on a YFB-821, five years ago, and suddenly an hour had passed without me noticing. I wrote about it at the time here. I realised that this tuba would be a very good companion to my Besson, particularly on some of the gigs which would suit a smaller bass tuba (Shibusashirazu, Orquesta Libre, and the current production of "K.Faust" which I'm involved in, for example).
Well, finally I took one home today, bought from the fantastic shop TUBA 88, with the kind help, amazing service and quite incredible attention to detail of Mr. Masanori Nakamura. I wholeheartedly recommend visiting his shop, or if you aren't in Tokyo, do check out his website here.

With Tuba Master Nakamura San

Anyway, I won't bang on about the instrument, as there's a fair amount of information about it online.

But here's some photos of it, in all its handmade beauty! Now I just need to learn to play an F tuba......