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I recently acquired a beat-up four-valve BBb tuba labeled as a Reynolds Contempora.
It is identical to the familiar small upright-bell Olds tubas; I was even able to swap some parts, including a piston and a main tuning slide.
What's the history of those names?

Art Hovey wrote:I recently acquired a beat-up four-valve BBb tuba labeled as a Reynolds Contempora.
It is identical to the familiar small upright-bell Olds tubas; I was even able to swap some parts, including a piston and a main tuning slide.
What's the history of those names?

Olds, Reynolds, King, White, Conn, etc engineers and owners were all intertwined at some point in history. Start here:

http://www.feolds.com/mainPages/reynolds.htm

http://contemporacorner.com/company/history/" target="_blank is a pretty verbose history of Reynolds. I think it's pretty interesting.

Your Reynolds is a TB-10. It's the same as an Olds 099. They were built in the same factory.

TubaTinker wrote: Olds, Reynolds, King, White, Conn, etc engineers and owners were all intertwined at some point in history.

I've stories from Zig as well... he used to work at Olds in Fullerton with a brass guy who worked under Pop Johnson at York and Sons. So there is also a direct connection to Kanstul too! I've been in the Kanstul factory and seen first hand how many sentcils they have on hand to label horns (mostly trumpets) that they make for other manufacturers.

Oh, Lord.

cjk wrote:http://contemporacorner.com/company/history/" target="_blank is a pretty verbose history of Reynolds. I think it's pretty interesting.

Your Reynolds is a TB-10. It's the same as an Olds 099. They were built in the same factory.

And that would have been the Reynolds plant in Abilene, although some parts were produced at the
Olds factory in Fullerton and shipped to Abilene for final assembly.