It did not completely suck.
It was actually of a far better quality than a $500 tuba should be. [NB: knowing the way Mike puts things, he's NOT saying the quality is good
per se; he's saying that it's better than you would expect for $500.] I would not take a chance on the Great Ebay Indian Brass Instrument Lottery just yet, because these things must still be fairly inconsistent. But the pitch was not bad ... workable. The rotors worked well and the linkages were pretty good. The finish was pretty decent. And the bell throat was very large. It made a pretty decent tuba.
Caveats:
1. I got to play ONE, and that ONE happened to be pretty decent, and quite inexpensive.
2. I did not play it with a tuner.
3. I did not notice whether it used a large or small shank mouthpiece.
4. I was not able to inspect the internal joints to see what is being hidden, so I have zero ideas about durability or solder globs or ragged tube ends.
It is balanced poorly, IMO. If you are a real tubist, forget about this one and resume snickering at it like the rest of us. But as a cheap tuba it was not the craptacular POS that I was expecting.