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I've always wondered which of our favorite European brands were made behind the "iron curtain" during the cold war? I started playing about the same time that the Soviet Union collapsed so I kind of missed out on all of this.

Thanks!

Patrick Haymore

I'm not following....?

Surely with all the German instrument manufactures, someone had their factories in East Germany. I'm just curious who they were and if they were allowed to export to the US.

Patrick

I know B&S horns were, as were Cerveny. I know bloke could give some more info on this as he has a "contraband" B&S Symphonie F.

phaymore wrote:I've always wondered which of our favorite European brands were made behind the "iron curtain" during the cold war? I started playing about the same time that the Soviet Union collapsed so I kind of missed out on all of this.

Thanks!

Patrick Haymore

Anything made in the Markneukirchen area, including B&S and what is now VMI (though VMI as a brand didn't appear in the U.S. until after unification). My understanding is that the East German tubas were the best of those made in the Second World, and I would certainly say that fits with my experience.

Cerveny and Amati have always been made in the Graslitz/Kraslice vicinity.

St. Petersburg tubas were being made in Russia during the Soviet era.

Of these, Cervenys of the Soviet era had their fans and some of them were wonderful. But B&S had overall the best reputation, and I suspect most high-end performing tuba players used them. B&S F tubas were highly respected in the First World during the Cold War because they were great tubas, and also because they were relatively cheap.

Unlike other Soviet-era products, the B&S F's were innovative. Most East German products were well-made derivations of pre-war designs (I have a collection of Soviet-era photography equipment that demonstrates this) that were not known for being innovative. The Symphonie F tubas were different, and that's why lots of tuba players went to some trouble to obtain them. Bloke has told his story, but Cliff Bevan writes about British players basically smuggling them into Great Britain during the Cold War.

Rick "impressed by what craftsmen might sometimes accomplish despite inept central planning" Denney

Rick "who owns a Soviet-era B&S, who has owned a Soviet-era Cerveny, but who has never owned a St. Pete" Denney

So if B&S and Cerveny horns were made in the Eastern Bloc, why do I only here about Russian tubist using St. Petersburg's?

Patrick

Rick Denney wrote:My understanding is that the East German tubas were the best of those made in the Second World, and I would certainly say that fits with my experience.

This is interesting. Do Americans generally refer to Europe as the second world?
Over here, it is the other way round; The Americas are the second (or new) world.

Sorry about the thread-jacking.

Do Americans generally refer to Europe as the second world?

The comment said "East German", not "European". Last time I checked, East Germany no longer exists, and at the time of its existence, was never equivalent to "Europe". Although "Second World" is probably an accurate assessment of the level of industrial technology in the countries suffering under the rule of the U.S.S.R., perhaps "Eastern Bloc" is a more neutral term to use in this day of hyper-sensitivity to words and political correctness. At least there was no reference to nappy-headed second worlders.

I think Cerveny tubas are made in the Hradec Kralove factory, 100 kilometers east of Prague. Although Cerveny is under the Amati-Denak, Ltd. corporate umbrella, its medium and large rotary valve instruments probably are not made in the Amati plant which is a long distance west of Prague and near the German border.

http://www.amati.cz/english/history.htm

FWIW,
I used to have a Cerveny Piggy that had C.S.S.R engraved on the bell. I heard once that the import duty was higher than the actual cost of the horn, don't know for sure... I played great, but 30 years of hard use killed the valves and the leadpipe had its share of red rot. Not sure it's exactly what you were after, but there it is.
jc

I'm surprised bloke hasn't chimed in....

I was a tuba player with the 298th U.S. Army Band in Berlin from 1979 until 1982. During that time I took many trips over the Wall into East Berlin!

Relax, guys! It was totally legal! Because we were occupying the city from Germany's defeat in World War II, we were allow to visit any part of Berlin we wished (with a few exceptions). We had to go to East Berlin with a pass from the Commanding General and we had to wear a dress uniform. Our normal T-shirt and jeans we wore in West Berlin wouldn't cut it for our visits to East Berlin.

There was a musical instrument store there called Der Musikfreund. I bought a couple of trombones there (bass in G and contrabass in BBb). These had the Weltklang brand. The young lady who sold them to me said that they would be listed as "B & S" if they would be sold in America, but she said that the company was only selling horns, euphoniums, and tubas at that time. I do remember seeing Custom Music selling B & S tubas prior to my enlistment in the Army.

I still have the G bass bone.

Has anyone ever played/seen a professional quality AMATI (not Cerveny) rotary tuba? It seems like Cerveny has made plenty of well regarded horns over the years, but what did Amati do, before they ceeded rotary manufacturing to Cerveny (and when was that?).
After seeing several hundred brass band musicians in Southern Serbia last summer, I concluded that most of them had Amati helicons, tenorhorns, and flugelhorns, followed in popularity by Cerveny, Weltklang, B&S, and some Chinese tenorhorns. No one had heard of West German brands. For them, Amati was the best.

Is it still the same basic design that they use today?

Patrick

Without seeing pictures, probably. The St Pete is the same design that has been made for a century.

phaymore wrote:So if B&S and Cerveny horns were made in the Eastern Bloc, why do I only here about Russian tubist using St. Petersburg's?

I doubt that was true before German unification and the dissolution of the Soviet empire. In terms of camera equipment, the high-end photographers in Russia (those with Party connections), often used western equipment. Those without the courage to do that use East German equipment. Workaday photographers (those without Party connections but also without Party enemies) used Ukrainian cameras. Those with enemies in the Party had their cameras taken away.

I expect the top tuba players in the USSR used B&S tubas during the Cold War. Maybe second- or third-tier performers used St. Petersburg or Cerveny tubas. That's a guess, but it fits with what I know about other fields.

Rick "thinking Party favor and talent were not necessarily correlated" Denney

finnbogi wrote:This is interesting. Do Americans generally refer to Europe as the second world?

Not Europe. Communist eastern Europe, during the Cold War. It had nothing to do with the Old World versus the New World. The designations were first coined by Alfred Sauvy, who was French, in 1952.

The First World was the developed West, the Second World comprised those nations under communist rule (including Cuba, Vietnam, the Chinese empire, and the Soviet empire), and the developing Third World.

These definitions are relevant only in the context of the Cold War, but that was the context of this thread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

Rick "who thinks of Europe as...Europe" Denney

jacobg wrote:Has anyone ever played/seen a professional quality AMATI (not Cerveny) rotary tuba? It seems like Cerveny has made plenty of well regarded horns over the years, but what did Amati do, before they ceeded rotary manufacturing to Cerveny (and when was that?).
After seeing several hundred brass band musicians in Southern Serbia last summer, I concluded that most of them had Amati helicons, tenorhorns, and flugelhorns, followed in popularity by Cerveny, Weltklang, B&S, and some Chinese tenorhorns. No one had heard of West German brands. For them, Amati was the best.

Amati, per se, swept up Bohland and Fuchs, Huttl, and several other well-known brass makers from before WWII.

But after Amati/Denak became the nationalized instrument manufacturer, which included Cerveny, any brand might have been marked on any instrument, made in any of their factories. Production was not based on marketing or profit, but rather on central planning, meeting quotas, and where particular brands could be sold for export.

I owned a Sanders tuba that clearly emerged from the Cerveny factory. It was a Cerveny in every detail. But if you peeled up the stick-on Sanders label, it said "Amati" underneath. Pro-quality? It depends on where you are talking about. I expect quite a few full-time performers in the Communist world would have been perfectly happy with my Sanders. It was not a bad instrument at all.

Rick "noting that optics made in Zeiss's Jena factory might say 'Carl Zeiss Jena', 'aus Jena', 'Jenoptik', or 'Pentacon'" Denney

Rick Denney wrote:

finnbogi wrote:This is interesting. Do Americans generally refer to Europe as the second world?

Not Europe. Communist eastern Europe, during the Cold War. It had nothing to do with the Old World versus the New World. The designations were first coined by Alfred Sauvy, who was French, in 1952.

The First World was the developed West, the Second World comprised those nations under communist rule (including Cuba, Vietnam, the Chinese empire, and the Soviet empire), and the developing Third World.

These definitions are relevant only in the context of the Cold War, but that was the context of this thread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World

Rick "who thinks of Europe as...Europe" Denney

OK, I thought about this geographically, not politically.
When I started watching the world, the cold war wasn't nearly as cold as it used to be...

finnbogi wrote:When I started watching the world, the cold war wasn't nearly as cold as it used to be...

I guess we can thank "global warming" for this.