Who's copying whom?

[iiipopes]

~1900: John Phillip Sousa asks Conn to build a helicon with a bell pointed up instead of to the side, and Conn builds the first sousaphone, using the piston valve body they used on their helicons.

NOOOO! J.W. Pepper, it is now established, @1895, built the first sousaphone, and built it in what we now call "raincatcher" format, because it was envisioned as a concert instrument, with the sound to come up and over the band, per J. P. Sousa's preference, and not a marching instrument.

Afterwards, Conn pointed the bell forward for the requirements of street, and later field, marching.

Sousa, in a later interview, did say that he thought the Conn souzys, as built then (which, still being pre-WWII, included both bell-up and bell-front models) were the best available for tone and intonation.

Conn, in order to promote sales, has cobbled history to its benefit, and damned be the truth as far as they are concerned.

[windshieldbug]

NOOOO! J.W. Pepper, it is now established, @1895, built the first...

He was just quoting RICK DENNY's post from 2003.
Even those who don't live near Pepper have been enlightened by now!

[Donn]

So I guess, if it's fair to reduce all that to a couple of points, 1) the front valve piston configuration was inspired by players' fondness for the sousaphone, and 2) big US tubas all descended from a small number of big US tubas.

The big tuba begats have been chewed over enough since then, I think without any radical controversy. The genesis of front valves, though ... sure thing, they had sousaphone valve sets to use, so they used them, but couldn't some of the motivation have been the European (and King) rotary valve tubas? How long do you have to look at someone playing one of those instead of your big tuba, before it occurs to you that you could put your pistons in front too? I'd think size might have hastened that process as well, since I find top valve ergonomics a little unbalanced with a large bell.

[roweenie]

Conn was building front action piston tubas as early as 1889, and calling them the "American" model:

http://horn-u-copia.net/Reference/Produ ... ument=Tuba" target="_blank

I seem to also recall seeing the patent somewhere, and (IIRC) it dates to the late 1870s or early 1880s.

I also seem to remember hearing that the impetus for this design was to avoid drips from the bottom of top action pistons on the player's lap.

[groovlow]

When have yall seen orchestral low brass stage left?

[Michael Bush]

When have yall seen orchestral low brass stage left?

That is a very interesting insight.

[iiipopes]

He was just quoting RICK DENNY's post from 2003.
Even those who don't live near Pepper have been enlightened by now!

Yes, but I just can't stand to see it in either hard copy print or in cyber-space print without immediately correcting it.

[Tom]

When have yall seen orchestral low brass stage left?

Last Saturday. You?

I don't think I've ever NOT seen orchestral low brass stage left.

Concert band? All over the place, but not when it comes to orchestra.

Tom "stage left = house right" B.

[Michael Bush]

Well if i can offer some info. The conn orchestra grand seems to me undesignated in model numbers. Rick's post seems to kind of merge the OG with the 36J and they are different horns. The OG does not use sousaphone valvesets and was kinda different with each horn.

The premise that sousaphones inspired larger models of tuba still holds water. The theory of front action with pistons could have more than one origin. It IS true they used sousaphone valvesets for some large front action horns so rick aint that far off.

Lo "denney defender" st

Yes, it was an evolution. In fact, as I posted several years ago, it turns out that if you find two of those big Conns, especially from the era before model numbers, that are just alike in every way, that is a lot. The wrap seems to have been fluid in the extreme early on, and may have depended very much on hard-for-them-to-predict factors such as what parts were on hand and the wishes of the customer. I once owned a pre-model-number OGB that was one serial number off from one in the collection of The Tuba Exchange, and they are close, but not exactly alike.

[Rick Denney]

So, I've been called back from the dead, it seems.

Yes, Pepper made the first sousaphone in 1895ish, not Conn in 1900ish, but other than that historical detail, I see no refutation of my speculations of a dozen years ago. The Pepper was a raincatcher--exactly a conventional helicon with the bell turned up, just as I described. I never mentioned marching, but Sousa's band without question played outdoors and held instruments on their shoulders. Sousa, at that time, was only a couple of years behind his leadership of the President's Own, and even his subsequent professional band adopted a military-band approach and appearance.

Good information about the use of front pistons by Conn in the decades before the sousaphone. I keep trying to find the first front-piston tuba (which in those days were called "side action"), and the 1800's seems to be it.

Rotary tubas even today have similar valve sections to the rotary helicons being made for marching and outdoor bands in the 19th Century, but in that case, the upright tuba probably came before the helicon, and the helicon adapted what was already available. Cerveny was making rotary upright tubas of similar configuration to modern instruments at least as far back as the 1850's (there is one from the 1870's pictured in Bevan, and but for the bell flare and a certain freedom of form could be a modern instrument).

Pictures from the Boston Symphony in the 19th Century show a Distin-style upright top-action Eb tuba, though it is true that the Boston Symphony stayed with bass tubas until the retirement of Kilton Vinal Smith, looong after most American orchestral tuba players were defaulting to contrabass tubas.

Piston valves are French and rotary valves are German, and both sets of immigrants were in the U.S., making things. But the piston valve on tubas seems to have come to the U.S. via Great Britain and makers such as Distin (and, a bit later, Besson). Top-action Eb tubas were the default instruments after the demise of over-the-shoulder saxhorns and before the entry of contrabass tubas as the default instrument (which, I suspect, demonstrates the influence of August Helleberg). Top-action pistons remained popular throughout, and many band rooms still have a bevy of Yamaha 321's.

But the point of my past arm-waving was to challenge the knowledge base into coughing up documentable facts to either dispute or support my speculations, so if there are newly documented facts to make it worth relitigating the topic, so much the better.

Rick "crawling back into his coffin" Denney