It might be fun but I’m glad I’m not cleaning them.
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This is the EXACT excuse I used that time I got drunk at Carnegie Hall.
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What? No blowjob jokes yet? 
Or for the extra flexible, tooting one’s own horn? 
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The mechanical bits don’t have to function, just dip it in a few coats of spar varnish and it’ll last for years.
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As a musician, I’m revolted. My wife has seen “repurposed” brass instruments before now and been incandescent with anger. She has lived in the North of England for a long time, and there is a long and sturdy tradition of Brass Bands here. I’m not that keen on Brass Bands, but I share her disgust at this kind of thing. What kind of state are these instruments in that they can’t be repaired and used? Kids here (in the UK) are crying out for instruments - it’s a struggle for bands and orchestras to supply them. So seeing them used in this way is just a disgraceful, wasteful travesty. No, yez can feck off with yer " and bagpipes too"! if you don’t like the music you can stick pencils in your ears and perforate your eardrums. Bad cess to you! Grrr!
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Adorn your brass-instrument-themed bathroom with Medieval Manuscript Butt-Trumpets:
http://listverse.com/2017/11/29/10-weird-trends-that-keep-showing-up-in-medieval-art/
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Yeah I came here to say that piss on brass must smell reaaalll great.
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I ain’t cleaning all that.
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French horns = bidets
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Nobody called them French horns; the piece refers to them as “tenor horns.” Which they are.
I have a 100-year-old 4-valve version of those tenor horns, in fact; it’s called a Cerveny “Kaiserbariton.” It makes me weep to think of someone pissing in it.
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The headline (which, I will admit, I missed until just now) says tenor horns. The text sayeth:
A little web searching then led me to the french horn urinals below.
It does seem wasteful.
I do metalworking/blacksmithing as a side line, and someone who knows this wanted me to cast a bunch of silver “scrap” for him. There were pieces that I refused to melt (and I took from my fee to scrap the rest). There was a signed navajo silversmith piece, a concha hat band, and a silver flute that only needed new pads. Maybe GirlChild will save me some $, and choose flute over another instrument when she gets to music class age.
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And no mention of the “brown note”.
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Have you ever heard of lacquer? Most brass instruments are lacquered nowadays.
Sackbut, obviously (and it’s in the brass family).
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A bitter end for a musical instrument, turned from a graceful work of music and art into literally-filthy jokes; an end even more despicable than being nailed to the wall of a bistro restaurant.
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As far as toilet I vote for a flaming tuba, burning methane.
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We could talk about how it is apparently commercially viable. Likely, more instruments end up as recycling material, being reused elsewherenot verified, or in the trash. The first and the last are galling, but also understandable. I by no means have it all figured out, but I did know some wonderful volunteers that fixed instruments for schools.
It’s a problem of value and a problem of scale. In reverse order, England is, compared to the United States, small in size and in population. Compared to just one state, I thought California, England is about 57% of the size. There are 49 more states, and some territories eligible for voting, and if we expand to the entirety of the U.K. the U.S. is about 40 times bigger. (Trying but failing to compare apples to apples.) In population, the U.K is around 65,000,000 and the U.S. around 329,000,000. The difference is about 264,000,000 or about 5 times as large as the U.K. in it’s eternity. There are a lot of instruments here. Many not well made. Many sold to schools that defund programs because that is Merca!
Next to value. There are just very few people doing repair work. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 8,240 people that are listed as doing repair work and tuning musical instruments in the U.S. That’s .0025% of the population. That’s tiny, and very spread out. At best there are 850 in California, for all of 39.54 million people, and that’s just .0021% of California’s population. Until somebody comes up with a reason to train people to do this, there is little imtopus to take it up as a career.
I live in a city with a fairly well known music conservatory. It also has at least 4 Nobel Laureates at the local university. Tech startups abound and the some of the wealthiest people in the U.S. have homes here. That said, at one point I think I knew all three volunteers who helped the local public schools fix their instruments. They were overworked and each instrument was a labor of love. The cost of repairing the instruments was, with labor, more than the instruments were worth, were it not for the volunteers. It was easier and more cost effective to get new instruments, let students just make do, let them languash, or let individuals pay for the repairs.
Then comes this anecdote. I use a typewriter everyday. I need to, for various reasons. I could use a computer, and do, but for speed, a typewriter is quicker and far less wasteful. I needed a typewriter because my old one couldn’t be repaired, there were no spare parts to be found before the days of 3d printing. (Even today the cost of designing and printing that part might be cost prohibitive.) I found a great typewriter at a rummage sale, and was talked out of it by a scam artist who said they needed that one as a gift but would sell me one for $20 from their collection for the favor. Trusting me, took the phone number and it didn’t work. I went to an antique store, the kind that rents booths. I was talking with the owner when I saw that typewriter in a booth with a huge price tag on it. A few minutes later I was sold one for $10 that worked just fine for quite a while. I asked how they could do that and he leaned in and said they had issues with her, and they knew the story, as she bragged about it. Second, one of the guys that had booths there pulled out a photo that showed piles of typewriters in a warehouse. “I haven’t bought from them, because the shipping is terrible, but if you want a classic typewriter all you have to do is drive there and they will find something that works.” There are piles of typewriters just decaying all over. There are few repair shops for the typewriters, and even though they are a limited resource (more so than instruments) if their value is as repurposed art, then that’s their value.
It’s not defensible. But I think it puts things in some perspective. There are a lot of instruments here, and not a lot of people able to do the repairs, no is there a lot of value in the repair work yet. I bet we see a resurgence in this as teaching and learning music gains value again.
I also want to say, that people love novelty. It’s not like there are hundred of bars in the U.S. with musical instruments as urinals. If you really want to get irritated, blast restaurant chains for using them as brick-a-brack. Seriously, come stateside and get some good old mega-chain family restaurant appetizer sampler platters while looking at brick-a-brack and flair.
From Office Space 1999, clip from Youtube
Just look at the walls in the clip and tell me which is worse, one restroom or hundreds… perhaps thousands of restaurants across the U.S. and abroad screwing instruments to the walls with drywall screws and Liquid Nails.
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Trumpet.
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