Chinese contrabass upgrades

[nikofernandes]

hello, I live in Brazil and I'm having the wonderful opportunity to buy a Contrabass trombone. But it is a Chinese copy and I would like to know upgrades to make it better.

I know the fake Hagmann rotors are the worst part, so I wonder if it would be worth swapping the rotors?

I read reports about the Leadpipe switch as well.

I thank you for your attention

[Matt K]

That’s going to strongly depend on what “worth it” means to you. You would have to do quite a few gigs on it to even have it pay for itself. If you just want a functional instrument at some large cost whether it will pay for itself or not… then yeah it’s a worthwhile upgrade. Although you’re probably not terribly far off from a new instrument when it’s all said and done. A new set of hangman’s plus linkage and labor is probably around 3k alone. And that assumes the slide is in reasonable shape which is might not be… in which case do you want to replace the outers and inners at ~$250/slide (x4 if it’s a BBb or x2 if it’s an F)?

[Finetales]

To get the contra and then swap the valves for something better, you'd already be paying at least as much as a new Wessex contra costs, which still isn't great but is much better than the fake Hagmann Thein clones.

When considering cost, a leadpipe swap is probably the only worthwhile upgrade to one of those.