GRASS-ROOTS BUSINESS;

The Capital of Oom-Pah-Pah

By KATE MURPHY (NYT)

DURHAM, N.C. -- WHETHER the tuba is in a marching band on the football field or in a brass quintet playing Christmas carols at the mall, chances are it came from the Tuba Exchange in Durham, N.C.

With tubas apparently growing in popularity, the company, started in 1988 by Vincent F. Simonetti, is the only national retailer that sells nothing but tubas.

As narrow as its business is, Tuba Exchange Inc., which sells about 1,000 new and used tubas a year, nevertheless finds itself brushed by the rapid shifts in world trade. The company has long imported most of its instruments from a manufacturer in Russia, because the price and quality are right, it says. In the past year or so, a rival tuba maker in China has started trying to push its way into the market with lower prices, though so far the Tuba Exchange has resisted.

Operating out of a canary-yellow, Victorian-style house that he used to share with a bakery, Mr. Simonetti darts about in a light blue surgical smock, which protects his starched business shirts from the oils that lubricate the valves of the shiny tubas in his showroom. The huge horns are everywhere -- new and used as well as not-for-sale antique tubas that Mr. Simonetti has collected. Residents of a nearby retirement home as well as schoolchildren make trips to see his collection, which includes a Civil War tuba from the Confederate army, with the bell facing backward so the troops marching behind could hear it.

''When I got into this business, people said I was crazy,'' said Mr. Simonetti, who until 1975 was the principal tubist for the North Carolina Symphony and now plays in a Dixieland band. ''No one thought I'd be able to make any money.''