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Are they any good? My friend is looking to buy, and has found both brands, in brass, for $2000.

Feedback appreciated! Thanks

Jean Baptiste?? Good God! Yet another competitor in the marketplace. Probably selling the same old stuff.

For the same price or less, purchase a reconditioned Pre-Macmillian Conn 14K, or Pre-UMI King, or Reynolds/Olds instead.

I have repaired and prepped Jean-Baptiste sousaphones for a certain music chain. The Jean-Baptiste sousaphones are a Chinese-made copy of the ever-popular Amati sousaphones, engineered and built in such a way as to be shiny-but-inexpensive-as-possible. The durability of these instruments is questionable, unless handled with extreme care. The valve stems are very susceptible to bending and breaking, new valves typically need to be hand-lapped and fitted with better springs, corks and felts before the valve action is acceptable, and the braces are insufficient to stand up to any sort of real-world use.

If one's primary object is to have a shiny-new instrument at the lowest possible price, then this instrument fits the bill. Otherwise, I'd highly suggest that really good pre-owned American-made sousaphones are readily available in this price range. I have even sold Conn 20K's in excellent condition for that price, and I'm sure others have, too.

Very well stated, Lee.

I'm thinking about importing a Mongolian tuba/sousaphone and badging it as a 'Schultz-O-Phone'. I'm getting closer to retirement and want to leave a legacy!

TubaTinker wrote:Very well stated, Lee.

I'm thinking about importing a Mongolian tuba/sousaphone and badging it as a 'Schultz-O-Phone'. I'm getting closer to retirement and want to leave a legacy!

The Jean Baptiste's are the Sam Ash retail chain relabeling of the JinBao's. I worked at the NYC store for a while. I think they're garbage. I believe the only people who ever bought them were the banda guys. They don't move a lot of them to really be competitive.