Lowejackson said:
Welcome to Autopia 
One question on the tuba, what materials do you use to clean and protect?
LOL... I should have expected this kind of question...
Lacquered brass -- the stuff you see 90% of the time in school bands -- is best cleaned with soap & water, or just plain water. Cheap lacquers can be damaged by glass cleaner products, and brass polish is definitely the wrong thing to use. I suppose that car care products designed for old lacquered finishes could work, but I've never bothered to try.
For bare brass, I'll clean off the tarnish with Nevr-Dull -- it's the only thing I've used so far that really brings the gleam back. It's the same stuff I use on the exhaust tips of my car, too.
Heavy silver tarnish or satin silver finishes need straight Tarn-X (if you want it done in less than a day), sprayed sparingly, then immediately rinsed. It's pretty strong, and it can degrade soldered joints, especially repairs done with lead solder.
For shiny silver:
Wright's or Twinkle silver creams do the job, and they even work by using the same rag over and over again. The cream, fundamentally, is just polishing compound in suspension, and the rag simply carries the same compound.
Weekly cleanings can be done pretty well with glass cleaner products. Most tarnish problems come from surface contaminants (skin oils, grass moisture, etc.), and Windex-type cleaners get all that stuff off. Plus, using a reasonably-clean polishing rag will take care of the polishing part.
Wearing cotton gloves for daily use also significantly reduces any need for heavy cleaning.
If you get silver polished extremely well, and it ends up really clean and smooth, water won't even stick -- it'll fall right off. That's a lot of work, though.
And that's just for exterior care... another book could be written about the internals, and yet another book could be written about how people come up with their own personal preferences!
