Tuff Bag Review (Better than Moorodian?)

After about 12 years, I decided to replace my well-worn, ripped, and beaten Moorodian bass case. I had originally thought of replacing it with another Moorodian, but thought of looking around a bit. I had seen the Ritter cases, but didn’t really liked the way they fit around the instrument. (They seem to be too big and don’t have the padding of the Moorodian.)

After some looking around and some discussions with Steve at the String Emporium (from whom I purchased a Finale bow), I decided to try a Tuff-Bag. Steve insisted that they were as good as Moorodian, and less expensive.

When I received the bag, I was a bit surprised: it looks almost exactly like my old Moorodian bag (sans the rips and holes). The material feels the same, although this is a bit hard to judge given the years on my Moorodian. The padding seems to be about 1 inch and there are ample carrying straps.

The Tuff-Bag has the same set of front pockets: a bow pocket large enough to fit bow in a case and two accessory pockets. The back pocket (where most people put their sheet music) is divided, having a stitch down one side thereby providing a pocket large enough to fit your music folder and a smaller pocket (where I keep various notebooks).

The first thing to go on my Moorodian (many years ago) was the zipper. So that was the first thing I checked on the Tuff-Bag. I'm happy to say that the Tuff-Bag zippers are strong and double stiched in place. Moroever, the Tuff-Bag bag has padding between the main zippers and all points at which the zipper could come in contact with the instrument. This is somewhat different than my old Moorodian which only had padding between the instrument and the zipper on one side (where the longest zipper is) and then only until about halfway down the lower bout.

Overall, I'm very impressed with the Tuff-Bag. The true test will come when I look back (maybe in another 15 years) at how the bag held up.