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I remember a time when I wanted a Kalison DS and so I bought one. It was a nice horn. It was fun to play. The valves were great and it was a comfortable size. A colleague of mine played one all through undergrad and sounded awesome on his. One day I tried a Meinl Weston 2165. The warm engulfing tone lead me to ditch the Kalison.

For a while Kalisons were considered "meh." They seemed like the ugly ducklings of the tuba world. They weren't terrible, by any means. Kalisons just never achieved super stardom like the 56J, Miraphone 1291, Kanstul, <insert horn-of-the-month>. The were labeled as having pitch issues or mouthpiece sensitive, etc.

Now that Kalison is no more (yeah yeah....G&P...yeah yeah), seems to be a more and more people saying rather positive, if not, nostalgic things about their beloved Kalisons. Where have the DS', Pro 2000s and 2001s gone? Have tubists tastes in horns changed? Were Kalisons really better than they seemed to get credit for? Where is my DS these days?

Discuss...

The good ones are still good, the bad ones are still missing a high Ab.

[Now, in my best Andy Roony voice...]
Tubas are like ex-girlfriends. A little part of you sometimes wants to know where it is now and what it looks like. And 9 times out of 10, if you have that chance, you'll remember in a few minutes why you don't have it anymore.

I have noticed that too. 10-15 years ago, many tuba players 'dissed' the Kalisons. Now they seem to be missed and even sought after...

Ever wonder why the PT-6 & PT-6P are now suddenly popular over the last couple years even though they have been around for, what, 20 years or so...? My main teacher from college has been playing his for nearly 20 years (he had the PT-6Ps for about 8 years my first year studying with him in 2000) - WELL before they became 'popular'. He still plays it in the symphony to this day. There was hardly anyone playing a PT-6 or PT-6P back in the mid 90s or early 2000s.......yet you see them all over the place now. Hirsbrunners were THE tuba to get back then and now you hardly hear anything about them.
Never bought a HB or B&S........just making an observation.

Apparently my Google is broken. (save the jokes) Does anyone have a link to G&P's official website? I wonder what horns they offer.

All this Kalison nostalgia is making me want to go back and play the DS I played on in college. It was the only five valve CC the school had so it was all I had to work with. I didn't always like the response, but maybe that was just my playing at the time. I've since bought a four valve 186, which I enjoy very much, so it would be fun to pull out the Kalison again and compare to see if it really was me or the tuba.

I do know that the bells were super thin and very susceptible to denting and wrinkling. I spent an afternoon with the instrument tech cleaning the horn up and getting the wrinkles out of the bell only to have a horn player set their case down next to it, the case fell over and put a big wrinkle right back in there....