Tag Archives: micro-tuba

micro-tuba

¡¡SKOOZDAG

i may not know any WORKING repair technicians, but i’m not COMPLETELY out of the loop…

i contacted my friend (since high school) dave cole, who is currently a RETIRED repair technician, who currently lives in wenatchee, and he recommended a guy in fremont, tony portela, with whom i made an appointment this afternoon. when the time came, i went down to his shop, which is, literally, a stone’s throw away from the former hale’s palladium (boy has that neighbourhood changed A LOT since i was down there last!), and he and i spent a pleasant hour, chatting about this and that, while he freed up my two stuck tuning slides. he actually didn’t use any new, secret methods, basically the same things i had tried, only his “trying” was more forceful, and he did actually use a bigger hammer… and some weird plastic goo that forms around the tuning slide and then hardens so that he could whack on it more forcefully without denting the slide tubes.

and then he ultrasonically cleaned ALL my tuning slides, and lubricated them with lanolin (which i have never used on a tuning slide).

so, now my micro-tuba has ALL working tuning slides, and it only cost me $100, which i consider to be a fair deal! 👍👍

micro-tuba

GADZOOKS!! 😮

i CAN’T take my micro-tuba to the repair shop, because the repair shop (which was originally owned by my friend and musical instrument repair instructor, larry LARS) is being SHUT DOWN (which, actually, doesn’t really surprise me that much: lars’ wife is getting old and she doesn’t want to be running a music store, and i understand that) at the end of july…

sam, the repair guy, said he doesn’t know where he’s going to go next. 😠

and, while initially, i got a zing of adrenaline, i quickly realised that if i put my hat in the ring to fix woodwinds for local school districts, i would have to come out of retirement, end my SSDI payments, and get a whole crapload of bailee’s insurance, so people don’t sue me out of existence when i can’t fix their youngster’s “heirloom” bundy flute “which he inherited from his grandmother” 🙄

but, in the short term, i also don’t KNOW any working repair technicians — other than dan oberloh, who has his own special story — who i can call to pull my stuck tuning slides and have the instrument back to me before i have to leave for OCF.

anhedonia, bssb, circus, micro-tuba, ocf, panto, philharmonic, unicycle

rehearsals and performances

rehearsal season has begun. the past two weeks, i have had rehearsals on mondays, alternate tuesdays, and wednesdays, plus my classes on thursday and sunday. we’ve got one more week of panto rehearsals (monday and wednesday) before we take the show to the oregon country fair for half-a-dozen performances over three days, which should help us work out the bugs for the traditional “holiday” performances in december.

this is more a reminder to myself than anything else, but i MUST REMEMBER to take my micro-tuba to the repair shop and have them pull two stuck tuning slides which i can’t seem to get free… i MUST REMEMBER because i am taking my micro-tuba to OCF, and will need the tuning slides to work!!

macque is NOT COMING to the oregon country fair this year, for the first time in a huge gob of years (47, or something like that). he hasn’t been doing very well, health-wise, and the doctors have said that if he goes to OCF, it might just kill him. it will be interesting seeing how well this group functions without it’s titular head. we’ve been doing fairly well the past few years, but it has been because macque has been behind it all, pushing.

at the same time, i can’t help but think, “lucky bastard”… he’s got a time limit: he’s coming down the point where he can definitely point to an end of his life that he can do nothing about. it should have been me, in 2003. next time, i’ll have a DNR and an AND ready. who has those things lying around when they’re 43? 😖

then, when i get back from OCF, on monday, i have a sousa band rehearsal on tuesday, a circus class on thursday, a sousa band performance at an old folks’ home on saturday, and a unicycle class on sunday.

my unicycle class, this session, actually has 5 people in it! 4 people other than me! 😉 there’s the little girl who went from not riding at all, to riding a giraffe without a spotter, last year, and her (i think) younger sister, and their (i think) mother, plus two women who look like they’re of indian descent, one of whom is probably between 40 and 55 or thereabouts. i believe the younger one is late teens to early 20s.