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I am constantly looking for used tubas and parts. The question of tuba demographics came up during a recent discussion with another repairman.

It seems to me that the bulk of horns that are floating around in the market these days are ex-school horns that were purchased in the 60's, 70's, & 80's. What's available in local markets seems to be dictated by two things:

1) Whatever horn the dealer in the area had access to or was pushing.
2) The selection of a particular horn based on the teachers in the area.

Folks weren't quite so mobile a few years ago and we didn't have the likes of some of the popular auctions to move things around the country/World. Tubas tended to stay in one area then and I suspect that this would still be reflected in horns that are still in storage in school repair departments and old music stores.

What brands of horns did you see most of in your area during the 60's, 70's, & 80's? Are certain brands of NEW horns more popular in certain areas today?

In high school (early 80's) there were Miraphone and Meinl Weston BBb's. My HS also used Yamaha marching tubas. My first instructor in college played an Alexander CC (still does). I'm from the Central Michigan area. I don't ever remember seeing any old instruments around (Conn, York, King) I was just a farmer, anyhow, so I wouldn't have known them if they had bit me!

The tubas in schools when I attended were mostly Bessons, bought probably in the 50's.

The new instruments being bought to replace them (when that happened, which was never in the Houston school district) were Miraphones. That was in the early 70's.

Most of the schools I attended had some POS Besson that was no longer functional hiding in the back of the instrument room. The instruments in daily use were sousaphones, usually Kings, and the more recent models were fiberglass.

I obtained my Besson Stratford comeback tuba from my high-school band director, who figured it was easier for me to take it away than for him to carry it out to the dumpster. It took some work to make it playable.

At Texas A&M, which has no music department, I borrowed a Besson from the university to play in the symphonic band. Everything they had was bought for the Aggie Band, and I have no idea how they ended up with an actual tuba instead of their usual sousaphones. The other three players had their own Miraphones.

Pretty much everyone in the part of Texas I lived in at the time wanted a Miraphone.

Around here in Virginia, I don't see much old stuff at all. And it's a mix, ranging from Jupiter sousaphones to Bach-branded GDR-era VMI's. The only old instruments I've seen were old-style King 2341's, which the local students thought were junk. Once, I brought my Miraphone to a summer gig (because it's easier to play while standing) instead of my York Master, and the high-school kids who had joined us for the summer ooohed and aaahed over the Miraphone. Go figure.

In Texas, Besson was the instrument to have, apparently, following WWII. Later, it was Miraphone. Ray can tell us whether that was a district-by-district thing, or motivated by particularly strong marketing.

In Virginia, it seems to be a band director decision sharply constrained by budget.

Rick "wondering why ANYONE would choose Jupiter sousaphones" Denney

In the mid to late 60's Mirafone offered a large horn that I believe was only identified as a Kaiser model. At least, I don't recall a number being associated with it. From what I was told a number of years ago, not that many were made, and even fewer made it over here.

The one I have was ordered by Dr. John Hill (later of the fame and infamy of the book and movie, "Blood and Money"). It has a bigger version of that classic mid-60's Mirafone sound. But intonation-wise, it doesn't have much in common with the very in-tune 186's. It has..."issues"... Nevertheless, this one was played professionally in an orchestra for a number of years.

I think part of the popularity of the Mirafones in Texas goes back to when Bill Rose got one in the Houston Symphony in the early 60's. He was looking for an alternative to his old Sanders. After that, a lot of his student got Mirafones, and I am sure that proliferation and endorsement helped their popularity. The were few readily available alternatives for the CC's in those days, particularly not ones with similar intonation and playability. For the BBb's the Kings would have been an alternative, but I never saw many of them down here in those days.

While this thread is on a Texas bent, there was some high school in Texas that always had its 1st chair tuba player show up at state Solo and Ensemble Contest with a King CC pit tuba. Even in 66-69 it was bare brass. That is is the only CC pit tuba I have seen. In those days, I thought it was pretty progressive to have a CC tuba, and someone who learned to play it, in a high school. Anyone know what high school that was that had the horn. I have always been curious. I have a vague impression that it ight have been a school in West Texas, but that is based on talking to the band director in '69, so it is just possible that I recall that incorrectly (Warning: events in the past may be more obscure than they appear).

Mike Lynch

In northern Ohio 1964-1968 my HS replaced an assortment of severely beaten up Sousaphones with a whole line of 8 shining new white, lightweight, fiberglass Conn's. We thought we had died and gone to heaven .

Why, after all, would a high school band want to waste money on an instrument you couldn't march with? I didn't play a tuba until I got to college (though I knew they existed).

Reno Nevada in the early 1980s. My HS had Mirafone 185s and Tupperware sousas. Just about everyone one else had 3 valve convertible tubas. The University of Nevada had 2 CC 186 tubas, 2 BBb 184s, and some BBb 186-like horns. They may have been 187s... not sure, but they seemed a bit bigger than the 16.5 inch belled 186 models of the era. As was stated before, memory does fade.

In the northeast corner of Illinois (Zion) in the mid 70's my HS had 3 matching Reynold Contempora (?) brass 4 valve BBb tuba with upright fixed bells. We had white Conn Sousaphones at the time.

The larger Mirafone was called the 190-4U. It is listed in a 1961 catalogue as having a 20" bell a "grand symphony bore." This is odd as all of the other models have the actual numerical bore sizes listed.

I thought everybody might like to see the price list for Sept. 1961:

190-4U BBb $1,000
186-4U BBb $850
186-4R BBb, (recording bell) $900
186-4U CC $850
186-4R CC, $900
183-4U Eb $595
183-4R Eb $675
180-4U F $675

Seems like it's basically "the bigger the horn, the more it costs."

correction: obviously the "F" tuba is a bit more expensive than the upright bell "Eb"

the elephant wrote:Anyway, Dan, when you went to contest you stuck out in a room of 80 tuba players if you did not have a decent looking 186. There were exceptions, but they were rare.

I went to contest with a plastic sousaphone, and played Air and Bourree as an 11th-grader. The only experience I had with anything better was the Besson I played in All-City Band in Houston (owned by and borrowed from the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts), and the Mirafone that I played during my senior year in high school, which my band director borrowed from someone he knew at Rice University.

But those of us from HISD were disdained on those few occasions we deigned to appear at a UIL contest.

Rick "who didn't own a truly excellent tuba until age 33" Denney

I graduated high school in 1974 (Bel Air Senior High School,
Bel Air Maryland)

the tubas that the high school had were:

1 Conn 20(?) J (large silver plated, three valves, bell front)
2 Olds (3 valve, small bore)
2 Reynolds (3 valve, small bore, similar to the Olds)

All of these were collected over a period of many years. We were lucky to have a directors (the school was split between two buildings because it was so large) that valued tubas and tuba players and did not want to get rid of good, solid old instruments.

3 brass Sousaphones (2 were King I think, I do not remember what the others were, all were old)

3 fiberglass King Sousaphones, these were new

The school also had some Olds and Pan American baritone horns.

At that time the tuba section was very protective of these instruments and happy to have them (we also knew that many other schools did not have concert tubas). They were all in good shape and we kept them in that way.

Mark

High- and junior-high instruments mostly:

Horns from 30+ years ago: Mostly Miraphones and Kings with some Conns and the occasional Besson sprinkled in.

Horns today: almost all Yamaha. Probably says a lot about how UMI's sales and marketing fell on its face.

I was fortunate enough to go to a brand-new HS in PA back in the early 70's. Still we only had 1 tuba (King upright 2341? 4-valve) and 4 fiberglass sousaphones (King). I loved that King tuba! and never felt ackward going to contest against the Miraphone Army. The sousaphones were blat machines.

College had about 4-5 Conn 2xJs probably from the 60's. They looked fine, but the were not good playing horns. The school bought me a Besson BBb, 3-valve compensator tubas....tight budget!, but I was thankful. Wonderful sound, with great intonation. I used the Besson for everything, all-state contests, quintet, jazz band, orchestra, and symphonic band. I certainly felt outa place with the Besson and only 3 valves. It was quite tall and I had to build a "tuba-foot" outa wood with a hole drilled in the top for the knob on the bottom bow......but that horn was a real player and it was kinda fun to have the Miraphone Army raise an eyebrow after their initial looks of distain.

My high school had an outstanding band booster club, and some of the parents were doctors, lawyers, etc., so although they were not extravagant, we had good horns. In Hopkinsville, KY in the mid' 1970's, we had six restored satin-silver, naked-lady Conn 20k's and a matching King Cleveland sousaphone. The school owned two Meinl-Weston rotary BBb tubas and a 3-valve Schneider BBb, all in good condition. Three tubists played in the top concert band, and they had the concert tubas. For the general concert band, the other tuba players used their sousas on a Wenger chair. I played euphonium, and had one of the school's two satin-silver Besson compensating 3-valve instruments. The horn players had Conn 8D's, the trombone section had Conn 88H trombones, the clarinet players had wooden Selmer instruments for concert work (including the bass clarinets), the saxophonists generally had Selmers, and I thought this was normal.

At Western KY University in the late 1970's, we marched Conn 22K fiberglass sousaphones, and had mostly Mirafone 186-4U BBb tubas. I played the school's only Cerveny kaiser BBb, then the lone Rudolf Meinl 4/4 BBb before switching to CC and playing the Meinl-Weston model 32CC, Holton 345CC and Hirsbrunner 392, all of which the school had one of. In my high school and college days, neither school had any American-made concert tubas except for the big Holton. It would be years before I experienced a King or Conn concert tuba, as I bought my own Rudolf Meinl 3/4 CC as a senior in college.

As a repairman in Atlanta, I saw that someone had bought a load of Karl Ziess tubas in the late 60's/early 70's, Amati tubas and sousaphones in the early 80's, King sousaphones and Conn 3/4 tubas in the late 80's/early 90's, and a lot of Jupiter/St. Petersburg/Mirafone tubas in the 90's/early 2000's. There were a few exceptions, such as one middle school that had a fleet of Olds 3/4 BBb tubas from 1967, the year the school opened. to this day, those are fine instruments and "keep on ticking". One school had a couple of 1960's-vintage Besson 3/4 BBb tubas. They were exceptionally durable, although not a really fine-playing instrument. In recent times, there were a few schools with Weril and Kanstul tubas, and they seem to be performing and holding up well.

snorlax wrote:Queens, NY and Chester, NJ (Morris Cty.) 1965--69

Both schools had strikingly similar lineups:

TUBAS--Purchased from Walter Sear: Mahillon 4v BBbs, upright and recording bell. DePrins 4v BBs, front-action upright bells
NON-SEAR: Short action 3v bell-front BBb Conns
SOUSAS: Conns and one 4v BBb King that was incredibly excellent. No fiberglass.
"Euphs" All bell-front 3v Conns. Nothing else.

I grew up in North Jersey and in High School in the early 70s I started on a brand new Besson 3 valve compensator and the Band director bought a M-W 4 rotary valve, I think a model 20, for me in my Junior year (1972). The other horns we had were Kings, I think. We used fiberglass King sousaphones for marching band.

I lived in Chester, NJ until 3 years ago and the High Schools in that area (West Morris Regional District) had Old King 1241/2341s for their bands at that time. I don't think that West Morris has that 4 valve King anymore, too bad. (I was a substitute teacher for a time in that school district)

I graduated from Rutherford High School, (in New Jersey) in 1982. We had two tubas: a 3-valve Olds and a 3-valve Reynolds. As was mentioned previously, these horns were very much alike. The Reynolds was not a detachable bell but a one-piece upright. They were bought back in the early '70s when my brother (also a tuba player) was in the band. They came with these big styrofoam cases that were (obviously) very light, but worked! In the elementary schools we had two Eb tubas: a small 3-valve Conn and an even smaller Czech 3-valver called a "Symphony". That was a real oldie and I spent a LOT of time with that horn as a 6th grader. Being an older high school there were some interesting things in the basement too-a 20th Century BBb tuba (a real dog) and a 4-valve Holton Eb sousa. But these weren't used by anybody, they were in storage.
Other high schools in the area seemed to have a lot of the old Kings and big recording bell Conns, (I know that Montclair High School had those).
Belleville High School was rumored to have a big York which was allegedly was discarded because it was "too big".!!! It was unusual to see any rotary-valved tubas in high schools back then as far as I can recall.

Oh, and we also had two Conn fiberglass sousas, purchased in the late '60s.

In a medium-sized high school in Arkansas (Arkadelphia) in the late 80s, the school had mostly bell-front Conn 20J tubas. Right before I got to high school, the band director had the **brilliant** idea of replacing the fiberglass sousaphones (I don't know what brand they were) with convertible Conn tubas for the marching band. We ended up rarely using them for concert band, and they sounded awful for marching band.

In the mid-80s the school bought one Miraphone 186. Our band director apparently did not think about how that (upright) tuba would blend with the recording bell 20Js. It wasn't a good fit. My junior year, when we had two tubists, the school bought a Yamaha rotary BBb (don't know the model #), to blend better with the 186.

At the festivals I can remember, it seems the 20J was pretty popular. For the schools with a little more money, the Yamaha rotary tubas were more popular than Miraphones.

I don't remember any other schools using convertible marching tubas - guess I just had bad luck.

In 1970’s Western Canada, school music programmes were reasonably healthy. I recall seeing pro level instruments still in the system. The music stores were duking it out for the schools market and carried Amati/Cerveny, Boosey & Hawkes, Couesnon, Marzan and Mirafone. I am sure the great American brands were being sold, although I didn’t take note at the time.There were some cheapie oddballs too, like Huttl and Karl Zeiss.
Yamaha came out slightly later, strong in the student and pro market.