Who is "bloke"??

[iMav]

On the "TubeNet" forum, whenever I search for information regarding John Packer horns, I see references to someone named "bloke". It seems this person's footprint on the site has been deleted...as I will see threads with posts saying things such as, "as bloke mentioned above"; with no posts by this person appearing in those threads.

Seems to be some mysterious person with all the JP knowledge in the world. LOL

[RickF]

"Bloke" is a tuba player and owner/operator of "Mid-South Music" in TN. He was one of if not the biggest posters on TubeNet. A few years ago there was a shake up among members and a lot of them were unhappy and left the forum. I never understood what all the fuss was about. At any rate, many members who left asked that all their posts be deleted. Another forum was created but don't remember what it was called.

[iMav]

Got it. I started a forum back in 2007 that grew pretty massive (130k members, 2.8 million posts). LOTS of drama. My position was always that once you post it, it belongs to the community. (You can leave, but the content stays.)

That being said, I DID purge two users that were massively toxic.
Sold the forum to drop.com a few years ago….

[iMav]

Another forum was created but don't remember what it was called.

TubaForum.net ??

[RickF]

Yes, that's probably it. I went to that site and saw 'Bloke's' name right away.

[58mark]

Joe is a Packer dealer that offers very good prices. That's probably why I own several Packer instruments, lol. I usually send people his way to check for the best possible price

[iMav]

Joe is a Packer dealer that offers very good prices. That's probably why I own several Packer instruments, lol. I usually send people his way to check for the best possible price

Definitely does not have the best prices currently. (I emailed him on pricing before I bought from Capital Music Gear.)

(didn’t know at the time he was “bloke”.)

[hyperbolica]

There are other perspectives on the forums and personalities you're talking about. The old Tubenet was turned over by the owner to a social/political activist to run. Eventually the topics all seemed to be directly related to social issues through heavy "moderation". It's hard to say who quit vs who was kicked out, but yes, lots of drama.

The people who started the new group were legit, but the individual you mention limits discussion to the "get off my grass" level, much (most?) of it off-topic. Even the tuba related stuff gets hard to keep from rolling your eyes, as he paints himself as a hero against the agents of decline (which is essentially everybody else - schools, cities, teachers, elected officials, students, musicians, people with jobs, people without jobs, etc...). It's tough to go there with a real tuba question, especially for new members or new players, or people who don't share one individual's views. Especially don't ask a trigger question, like pistons vs rotors, bell materials, 6/4 vs 5/4, BBb vs CC, Chinese vs German, pull slides or don't pull slides, tuba player or tubist, etc. That particular member posts 3X as much as the next person, and 6x as much as the most chatty board admins. https://www.tubaforum.net/memberlist...d=d#memberlist Massively self-over-estimates, to the point where you're embarrassed for him.

Worse yet, with phpbb there is no real way to ignore obnoxious posters. So I only go there rarely. There are a lot of worthwhile tuba people over there, you just have to filter 80% of the content.

[tokuno]

Bloke is Joe Sellmansberger of MidSouth Music. Fine musician and experienced repairman with useful insights.

[highpitch]

Years ago he thought one of my posts was humorous.

Apparently a real unicorn...

[iMav]

Pretty much reinforces the limited interactions I’ve had with him (primarily email and Facebook).

[comebackplayer]

You can probably find old posts using the internet archive's way back machine is you are really wanting to find them. https://archive.org/web/

[Pat]

TubaForum.net ??

Thanks for the re-direct. Love the "new" site full of old names.

[euphdude]

In the several years since I've been active in Tuba-euph land, I was going to ask what in the world happened to the old Tubenet? Our forum here was always my favorite for euphonium related material as it was more focused on euphonium. Nevertheless, there was a huge amount of good information on the old Tubenet. I did remember that a couple of the posters were making snarky political comments that I felt were completely irrelevant to the topic at hand - that was annoying - and there was drama when someone would get offended and engage those guys. But I couldn't believe how much the activity dropped off on the Tubenet compared to what it was.

[Eupher6]

It's true that Joe aka "bloke" is opinionated on many things, not the least of which is politics. He is adamantly conservative and makes no bones about it.

But beyond that, he did some work on my Kanstul tuba - while I waited - about 5 years ago. I thought that was very considerate of him as I was traveling at the time and didn't necessarily want to return to the east side of Memphis to pick the horn up.