Posted by Gray Bach on October 08, 2000 at 14:36:44:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Mirafone Sousaphones posted by Anthony Labelle on October 08, 2000 at 11:30:47:
To Anthony's question, we at first were playing Mirafone bits and necke, BUT, like I said they break easily, and were VERY expensive to replace. We ended up using some bits and necks that a company (Bandland) in Knoxville found us that were generic. The necks alone for Original equipment Mirafone sousaphones were , I believe, $275 a shot. This is expensive anyway, but the whole state of Tennessee has a budget problem in secondary education, and Tennessee Tech, because of who we're compared for funding purposes, has one of the lowest per-capita funding in the state. There are high school bands in the state that have literally 5 TIMES the budget of our entire music department. So original equipment parts are especially expensive for us. Someone may be able to clear this up for me, too, but I had actually heard that the Mirafone sousaphones that we had were made by a different company but stamped with the Mirafone name per a marketing agreement.
Gray Bach