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... or old 'Frankentuba' (not really much difference, I guess!

This one came in to the shop yesterday for a little dentwork and valve alignment. Checking through my notes... I may have miss-read the bore as .673". Most of the Conns with this style valveset are .737" bore.

Any help in the offing from the Loyalist perhaps?

jeopardymaster wrote:Any help in the offing from the Loyalist perhaps?

Not much help there. However... the 48K 'New Wonder' has a similar 'criss-cross' some of the valve circuits.

That horn looks a lot like one I had and traded off about 15 years ago. I bought it from Clonsky (spelling?) Music in Denver about 1986. I was told it was a Conn prototype. At the time it was raw bress, and there was ink markings and resoldered joints where various parts were apparently redone. After It left me, it was dipped. Unfortunately, I don't have any photos, the serial #, or the reciept for it. It's been a while so I can't say for sure this is the same horn.

It was OLDHORNS. It's based on a 10J but has a smaller bell.Nice playing horn, plays a lot bigger than it looks. Harvey Phillips tried to buy it from Dave Nicholson. L.B. Oliver owned it last I knew.
mike

That doesn't look unlike the late 60's 2J prototype I played on when I was studying with Harvey in 70-71. Dave Gannet was also using one and I believe there was a third one. Maybe this is one of them. I often wished I could have kept it - especially after the production 2J I was supposed to get never made it out to Oz. It was obviously quite different to my King but made me a fair bit of money in Boston recording studios.

kingconn wrote:It was OLDHORNS. It's based on a 10J but has a smaller bell.Nice playing horn, plays a lot bigger than it looks. Harvey Phillips tried to buy it from Dave Nicholson. L.B. Oliver owned it last I knew.
mike

You are 100% correct. LB was here on Thursday and this horn is his. LB 'lurks' here and saw this post. He called me tonight and confirmed that this is the same horn that 'oldhorns' owned. I've tried to lure L B into posting but he prefers to just stay in the shadows. He is a wealth of information.

It did indeed have markings all over it indicating that it was probably a prototype. Joe... the fact that the bell seam is turned wrong and it has solder all over it more-or-less confirmed to me that it was put together in a prototype shop and was never intended to see outside those doors. I can just imagine these guys putting stuff together 'just for see' and then taking it back apart to try the parts on something else.

The valve block does not have a serial number. I think it was originally a three-piston valveset right off the assembly line and the guys added the 4th valve to it much like I do. The other parts were probably also parts that were taken right off the assembly line. I think it would be just wonderful to be able to walk out into production at Eastlake these days and just grab up a basketful of stuff and then go back to my little lab for some experimenting. That's how these great old horns evolved to be what they are.

I think this might be the Chuck Ward CC tuba prototype for Conn which was succeed years later by the Matt Walters prototype which became the 5X-J series. I can't remember it well but I do remember that it was tightly wrapped like this.