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Hi!

For all you “King-o-phile’s”:

I have a Cleveland sousaphone, which I played in high school (back in the mesozoic period!).

I have never completely understood the “Cleveland” brand. I am guessing it was a more economical version of the Kings.

My question: Is there actually a qualitative difference between Kings & Clevelands?

I encourage anyone to chime in and correct me if I'm wrong, but here's what I understand about it:

Cleveland was an instrument manufacturer that was acquired by King Musical Instrument Company. The early Cleveland/King instruments had "King" or "The King" in quotation marks. For the majority of the time, they were engraved as Cleveland Kings. Then King took "Cleveland" off altogether.

What I CAN say with a degree of certainty is that the Cleveland Kings are not economical Kings. I own a Cleveland King sousaphone as well, and it's the best sousaphone I've ever played. Anywhere I play it, people compliment the tone. It plays more like a tuba than a more "woofy" sousaphone.

And later Cleveland became the "student" King line. As above, It used to be a separate company until H. N. White bought it "way back when." Cleveland is to King in a similar manner that Pan American is to Conn: mostly similar tooling, more of a branding/price point situation. In the guitar world, in Cleveland's later iterations, it would be analogous to Fender/Squier and Gibson/Epiphone.