I will in the next 2 or 3 years need to purchase a tuba for my son. My concern is that after I spend $13k on an instrument, someone will use 3-D printing to make instruments at a fraction of the cost. Is this a rational concern or is 3-D printing nowhere near tuba ready?
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Is it a Tuba or a Sousaphone? I’ve seen plastic Sousaphones, but not a plastic Tuba.
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$13k? For real?
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I haven’t heard anything about the acoustic properties of any 3D printed item, except for whistles (which are hard to mess up). I’d guess that they’re not in general of high quality, for vatious reasons.
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Are they 3D printing items of that size and complexity yet? I find it hard to believe that it would be easier and cheaper to do it that way than any other.
Not a valid concern. 3d printing things is difficult. Metal 3d printing is more difficult, and it 3d printed tubas won’t happen anytime soon.
ps - 13k? Had no idea.
3D printing is nowhere near tuba ready. Making tubes is extremely difficult for 3D printers, and the complex interconnection of tubes that make a tuba will be even more difficult. I don’t know if there are any brass materials being used, but they would have to be sintered (lots of little particles stuck together then later fused by heat) and I doubt that would produce musical instrument quality material.
As a former tubist (spending 13 cents on a tuba wouldn’t have been worth it for my very limited ability) I’m curious why you will need to spend that much on a tuba. Schools usually provide instruments like that, although maybe not the best quality. But they can be rented, bought used, and there were fiberglass sousaphones that cost much less and would be suitable for practice. Of course if he’s that good, it’s an investment. The price is not likely to drop as a result of 3D printing.
Around here, tubas are the target of thieves. They sell them to bands that play Banda Sinaloense. There is apparently quite a black market in them, to the point that a number of schools have dropped their marching band programs because the tubas keep getting stolen and they can’t afford to replace them.
I can believe $13,000 for a high quality tuba. Amazon has one listed for $11,369, down from $22,479.
The benefit of 3D printing things isn’t that they’re cheaper. In fact, for something like a Tuba, I can’t imagine a printed version ever being cheaper to produce than just bending some brass tubes.
Rather, the advantage of 3D printing is that you can do small production runs without any additional equipment. If you’re in the tuba making business, you probably spend something like $300 on raw materials and several hundreds of thousands on machines to bend and stretch the brass. You need to sell a lot of tubas to make your investment back, but this is OK, because tubas are pretty popular.
Let’s say I invent a steronzomophone, though. I do all of the design work and I build a one-off prototype. It sounds awesome, and I find 20 people out there who want them for their quirky avant-garde bands. If I need to buy $1.2 million in equipment to mass produce the darn things, that’s more than $60k per person. I’d basically have to scrap the whole idea. 3D printing promises to change all that, because the capital costs are the same no matter what I’m printing. So I can find a 3D printer and print out 20 steronzomophones to satisfy my meager demand. If steronzomphones take off and I need to make 10,000 of them, I would abandon the 3D printer and invest in the proper machinery.
While I hear 3D printing is being adopted for more and more manufacturing, it’s not going to take over from traditional methods of manufacturing musical instruments.
This is especially true for tuba.
Unless your son is in the conservatory you should not be having to pay professional grade prices for an instrument. While it’s nice to have the very best and most wonderful, there are instruments that are quite suitable for students that don’t cost the earth and are actually more appropriate vehicles for a student who is not playing professionally.
You should never pay list prices for an instrument in any event. There are places and people who will be more than happy to sell you one at that price but you don’t have to play along. Negotiate like you were buying a car.
At the beginning levels there’s usually school horns available, especially on tuba, but often students have to share time on an instrument. There’s also quality issues, as school horns tend to be not the best; they’re beat upon by students who are not always so careful about toting the instrument around, maintenance, etc. So it’s reasonable to buy a tuba for a student, especially if they show great promise. But it is by no means an absolute necessity, especially if they show only middling results or are only playing tuba recreationally/electively and are not looking towards a career in music.
Some people buy a tuba for use at home so the student can have unlimited practice and have them play the school horn at school; it’s easier and more convenient to the student to only have to schlep around a mouthpiece and music than to deal with a horn often weighing upwards of 25 pounds and a case that weighs as much or more.
I do not know where you are located but I highly recommend you look at Dillon Music in Woodbridge, New Jersey. as a possible source for your son’s tuba. They’re great people who sell instruments at fair prices. They also do excellent repair if you are in the vicinity. And they ship all over the place as well. Please see http://www.dillonmusic.com/ for more information.
A student model horn or even a used instrument is very often the most appropriate for an elementary or high school or even college student. These horns are most typically under 5K and are often much less than that.
Your son’s music teacher/band director should also have input into the situation. They can often recommend sources of instruments that will be most useful to you.
You can also rent instruments.
Finally, for students of great promise and limited resources, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation can be of help. They provide grant and scholarship assistance to students who qualify. See http://www.jkcf.org/ for more information. To see the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation in action, check out the NPR show “From the Top,” which features performances by JKCF students. Here’s a friend of mine who performed … on tuba, naturally. 
He’s now at the New England Conservatory of Music.
http://www.instantencore.com/music/details.aspx?PId=5076046
Hope this is helpful.
Also, if you do buy, buy used. My parents paid way too much for my French horn, which I eventually sold on ebay for a fraction of the price. Whoever bought that thing got a deal.
Professional quality tubas can cost upwards of 10K and beyond, very easily. But not needed for most people unless you’re playing professionally and even then you can get quality instruments for less than that. Like everything else, you gotta shop around.
Tuba is actually less expensive than some professional level instruments – as anyone who has had to purchase a stringed instrument can tell you. Or even a bow. A bow alone can run to thousands of dollars. At that high level things do cost more. Sometimes lots lots more. I’m not talking Stradivarius here, neither.
ETA: Like cars, musical instruments are often listed with prices that are not a true reflection of the final selling price. Sometimes they are, but not always. Or even not often, I’d venture to say. Like buying a car your negotiating skills/trade in may factor into the equation.
3d printed acoustic guitar
http://mobile.businessweek.com/articles/2012-10-11/the-worlds-first-3d-printed-guitar
My son’s band director tried to talk him from a trumpet to a tuba.
Thanks, but no thanks! He already has a Yamaha, Bach, and Getzen. I’m not spending any more on brass!
3D printers do have the advantage of being able to make shapes that can’t be easily created by conventional machining or metalforming techniques. For example, herringbone gears are difficult to make with conventional gear-cutting machines, but can be printed on a 3D printer easily. In theory, a 3D printer that could make a tuba in one print could be faster and easier than all the elaborate metal-bending steps required to make a tuba through normal means. In practice, 3D printers have problems with resolution and surface finish - parts tend to come out grainy or with visible lines on their surface from the printing process. I expect a 3D printed tuba would require a lot of post-printing surface finishing, which would probably eliminate the benefit of being able to print it in the first place.
There has been some interest in 3D printing rocket engines, which are somewhat similar in having lots of little finely shaped tubes, so it’s not completely unreasonable.
You can get a used Mirafone for under $6k; Yamaha and Conn should be even cheaper. It should be a while before you need to plunk down nearly $20k for one of these, or a Hirsbrunner.
Jenny, what (in your considered opinion) is the difference between an inexpensive instrument and an expensive one? (Sound, I would guess)
Number of valves, consistency of tuning, ability to tweak the tuning on a per-note basis as you play, quality of sound (measured about nineteen different ways…). Also, the quality of the performer plays a big difference in whether or not a more expensive instrument is needed… a beginning player can do fine with a beginner’s tuba, but even a great tuba player isn’t going to be able to make it sound as good as a great tuba. Similarly, a beginning player on a great tuba isn’t going to sound great.
Thanks, Ethilrist for a very comprehensive answer. Your statements are pretty much what a good clarinet (which I play) is against a less expensive one. (But there is always the consideration of reeds, which is a whole 'nother story.) 
Jake
Then there’s CC versus BBb versud D, Eb and F tubae. And don’t even talk about C tubas; they’re just baritones with an attitude.
That’s kind of relative to what you can afford to pay, no?
It’s a little more complicated than that.
You can spend a lot of money and still sound like crap; conversely, I’ve heard some really amazing music played on really crappy horns.
The idea is that you get the best horn your can find that works for you at a price you can afford to pay.
Everyone sounds differently on every instrument, it’s really an individual fit. What is great for me might suck for you and vice versa.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that there’s lots of different kinds of tubas … but not every kind of tuba is available for testing and evaluation by every one. And two horns can come off the assembly line one after the other and respond quite differently.
So the choice tends to be a compromise of some kind … what you could get your hands on, what you can afford to invest, what you wind up with that’s best for your needs.
I will tell you this – there’s a lot of cheap Chinese imports. They tend to have bird names like “Lark.” Quality of alloy and craftsmanship is poor and these horns tend to have a high failure rate. They break easily – easier than standard well made tubas – and once broken are often impossible to repair, hard to find parts for, just a bad deal all the way around. You may see these horns at your local music dealer or on ebay. Avoid them.