please help me identify an old sousaphone?

[orangefleabait]

http://imgur.com/N35Jxvf

I picked this up on a whim. I found lyon healy and couturier continuous conical bore. I was hoping to learn how old it is and also why the bell is straight? It seems a little iunusual. Thanks tubenet!

[Donn]

We call those straight bell things "helicons". The sousaphone came after the helicon. Yours has "couturier continuous conical bore" engraved on it? Might be worth taking that thing in, to someone with a lot of experience restoring old tubas, and see if there's enough left to get it going again.

[orangefleabait]

A helicon! Great! That's the kind of thing I want to know. I also found boy scout band and aberdeen washington engraved on it.
I'll check out the link with the article, thanks everybody!

[windshieldbug]

Does it have a serial number on it? With that we can tell when it was made within a year or two.

[Donn]

I also found boy scout band and aberdeen washington engraved on it.

Cool, I'll let them know. They probably been wondering where that thing got to.

Assuming this thing was made before the Depression? according to wikipedia,

By 1900, Aberdeen was considered one of the grittiest towns on the West Coast, with many saloons, whorehouses, and gambling establishments populating the area. Aberdeen was nicknamed "The Hellhole of the Pacific", or "The Port of Missing Men", because of its high murder rate.

Other than the occupations mentioned above, I imagine most men worked in sawmills. There's still people out there. It's the western end of US 12, which goes to Detroit by way of Missoula, Aberdeen SD, Minneapolis and Chicago.

[Tom Eshelman]

I bought a similar couturier Eb helicon about 15 yrs ago for $300 and sold it to another tubenetter for $300. Mine was in nice shape and silver. A beautiful horn but not a good player.

[Tom Eshelman]

Mark Chalabala has at least a couple dozen artistic pictures of the sinewy slides of a couturier Eb helicon (formerly mine) for sale on his website - starting with the 11th picture tile on this page http://tubahouse.com/horn_default.asp?p ... &par1=Tuba . The others are further down the page (they are not identified).

[orangefleabait]

It came from an estate sale in the Seattle area. Funny to imagine a group of boyscouts marching down the skid road playing yankee doodle... I did consider taking out to the troop, but it seems like they wouldn't care. Probably have to contact someone higher up the food chain.

Where would one find the serial? Ive looked all over the bell... and most everything by thevalves is... pretty green.

[windshieldbug]

Where would one find the serial? Ive looked all over the bell... and most everything by thevalves is... pretty green.

It should be on the side of the middle valve... Most likely near where the patent info is.

[imperialbari]

The body wrap and the neck look similar to that of the Conn 26K/28K.

Did Coutourier buy parts from Conn?

Klaus

[orangefleabait]

The serial number is 12220 as best I can tell.

Is there a chance this isn't the original bell? I am curious about the seam/wrap/band thing. Any thoughts?

[windshieldbug]

With that serial number and those valve slides, I would put the manufacture at c.1922-1923 (unless you have the actual shop records for a given number serial numbers can only provide an approximate age).
Couturier had been building instruments for Lyon & Healy since about 1922, particularly saxophones. The Couturier company went into receivership in Oct. 1923, and Lyon & Healy bought them in 1924. As far as I have seen after the purchase most of the brass instruments were built with conventional parallel slides.

Trumpet/cornet # 12087 has both "Lyon & Healy/Makers/Chicago/USA" and "Couturier/Pat/Continuous Conical Bore" on the bell.

My list of known (to me) Courturier instruments can be found at
http://www.horn-u-copia.net/serial/Couturierlist.html