Choosing a case

[ghmerrill]

Zippers will inevitably fail. I just don't understand how case makers gravitate toward zippers when the old-fashioned clasp works just fine.

Get off my lawn! lol

I'm with you on the zippers, and also with the crazy old man comment. But everything will inevitably fail -- or as John Maynard Keynes famously remarked, "In the long run, we are all dead."

However, I've never actually had a zipper on an instrument case fail. I confess that I'm surprised, but there you have it. I've expected my (widely felt to be cheesy) Schiller bass trombone case to have failed some time ago, but the silly thing isn't even showing signs of wear. And my Gard tuba bag (now going on 6 years of use) is the same. Likewise, the zippers on my equipment bags for tuba/euph/trombone. I've had some stitches fail (and had them restitched) on the handles, but no problem with the zippers. Maybe I'm just more careful with my cases than most people.

Also, clasps don't really work when the case is flexible material (leather or nylon fabric). And I HAVE had clasps fail -- and they're a pain to replace. I guess I'd prefer metal zippers -- except when I think of what happened to a very nice pack with metal zippers that turned into a useless mess after my son took it saltwater fishing one day. Now the old-style leather straps with buckles ... THOSE are a force to be reckoned with. But zippers ... I don't know ... They seem to be making these nylon zippers much tougher recently (and stitching them on more solidly).

My repair tech's main complaint against the fabric cases is that they don't have real hinges, and tend to fail at that point. But so far the Shiller case hasn't shown signs of that either. And at a cost for that case alone of under $100, and the protection it offers, I could afford to replace it every few years and still come out ahead of alternatives. It's shockingly durable.

Protec has introduced a new line of cases called "MAX" that appears to be intended to be part-way in quality between their basic ones and their higher end series. The bass trombone one is about 50% more costly than the Schiller, but appears to be simply an enhanced version of it (and probably worth the extra charge). They're getting a good a reputation in the trombone community, but although they're made for a variety of instruments, these do not include tubas or euphoniums.