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Hey Guys,

I'm looking to replace my bands brass Sousaphones with lighter Fibreglass models. What in your opinion is the best/pro fibreglass Sousa available?

Cheers!

OK so let's scratch those words and go with 'most okay/best'

At the moment we have modern brass Yamaha sousaphones, which are great to play, but due to some back injuries in the section we have been forced to look at the lighter options.

The original Conn 36K. Find one, rebuild it, play it. Accept no substitutes. I had to, because I couldn't find one in time for summer gigs last year, along with financial restraints at the time, so I found a Bundy/Selmer copy of it in parts, all there, which my tech rebuilt and gave me a deal to clear space in his morgue for the more common brands the schools here use. Almost as good, but not quite. One of these days, I'll get with the program also.

Modify the upper loop of the first valve circuit to be a slide, and shorten it slightly so you can push for 2nd space C, leave it @ 1/2 to 3/4 inch out for Eb and Ab, and pull for 1+3 low C and low F, pull 3 and set it so 2+3 is in tune, and you have an incredibly in tune, good toned, well built, lightweight foundation to any community band or other outdoor ensemble. Get a Kelly 18 to go with it in your choice of color, as the rounded bowl helps with the projection and articulation.

This is not just a flippant rant. I have played almost all of the fiberglass offerings over more than four decades (yes, last month marked my 40th anniversary of volunteering to play souzy as a freshman in high school marching band, starting with a first generation King 'glass souzy), except possibly the Yamaha, including:

old King
new King
Conn 36K
Conn 22K
Selmer/Bundy
Olds (with the "Olds" brace at the bell collar)
Reynolds
Buescher (large bore)
Martin (yes, Martin did make a fiberglass souzy decades ago - there is one in the band room at the school where my community band rehearses, still in use. I played it. Good horn. Rare as hens' teeth.)

I didn't bother with the Jupiter after my bad experience with the metal ones some years ago, and they are only copies of the King, anyway. (get it - King - Jupiter [Roman king of the gods])

Did I say original Conn 36K?

And not the "new" Conn 36K. The "new" ones are only rebranded Kings that come off the same assembly line, with a different decal attached at finishing.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. The Yamaha would also save us some money on hard case since we already have the set of brass Yamahas.

Unfortunately since we are a 'uniformed' group, I need to have 4 identical instruments which makes finding older ones much harder.

Has anyone played the Yamaha model against the King/Conn models?

[Sigh] If you must purchase new, then the King souzys are probably the best choice. They have suffered the least over the course of the H.N.White company transforming in stages into the cyborg. (This is not a condescension - Mrs. White could only live so long, and no one takes care of a company better than the founder's spouse. R.I.P.)

The Kings have good intonation, with sharp 6th partials (that's the notes around 4th line F). Like all smaller bore horns, (.687 instead of @.730), they can overblow if not careful. They are not as amenable to modification as is the real 36K.

The Kings have one quirk that is not like any of the other horns: the two bits are of different sizes: one to take the mouthpiece, the other to fit the gooseneck. You must get them in the right order so you don't have intonation issues and so they don't stick together.

The other good thing about the Kings is that they are relatively insensitive to mouthpiece selection. Almost any standard mouthpiece will work for them.

Finally - crash parts. The basic design of the King is the same, meaning that the parts are essentially the same ever since they first manufactured them @ 50-60 years ago. So any shop worth its tools will have a morgue for crash parts, that you will not get with the Yamahas. The Yamahas are expensive to start with, and the parts even moreso.

I just never felt as secure playing the Yamahas as I have the Conns and Kings.

Why not have the bet of both sousaphone worlds. Jupiter offers this:
1000 Series JSP1010S Sousaphone

It's a fiberglass body with a silver brass valve section and bell. I think I have this model, but Lee converted it to a CC for me, as some of you might have recently seen. It plays great and has a large concert tuba sound. Surely, Lee had much to do with this, but I can't imagine that it was an awful instrument when it was a new BBb sousaphone.

Is it the best pro fiberglass sousaphone? As most of my paying gigs are in the trad. jazz field now, this has become my main instrument. And, although I only spent 3 years of my career as a full-time player (not playing sousaphone),and decades more of playing paying gigs part time, I will soon be collecting an AF of M pension, so I guess I'm a pro, sorta and I really love this fiberglass sousaphone.

Bill Troiano wrote:Why not have the bet of both sousaphone worlds. Jupiter offers this:
1000 Series JSP1010S Sousaphone

It's a fiberglass body with a silver brass valve section and bell. I think I have this model, but Lee converted it to a CC for me, as some of you might have recently seen. It plays great and has a large concert tuba sound. Surely, Lee had much to do with this, but I can't imagine that it was an awful instrument when it was a new BBb sousaphone.

Is it the best pro fiberglass sousaphone? As most of my paying gigs are in the trad. jazz field now, this has become my main instrument. And, although I only spent 3 years of my career as a full-time player (not playing sousaphone),and decades more of playing paying gigs part time, I will soon be collecting an AF of M pension, so I guess I'm a pro, sorta and I really love this fiberglass sousaphone.

I've played one of those. Granted, it was a few years ago. The company may have better QC now. But the one I played was not the "best of both worlds"; quite to the contrary, it was the "worst of both worlds": inconsistent intonation, and no real weight savings from the all-metal horn (because Jupiter's metal is so thin you can dent it just picking it up to play).

I think I'd rather have the brass body and glass bell combo...

For all the talk that "professional" and "fiberglass" can't go in the same sentence, I know of at least one professional band (a premier military band's ceremonial group) that uses them, and I know a few individuals who use them as parts of jazz ensembles--for money. So, I think those two words can go in the same sentence. Would they use those instruments in an orchestra? Probably not, especially the one with the ultra-metallic paint job. The military examples were painted a metallic silver that looked perfect in the application. They sounded good, too. But then they weren't mediocre high-school players trying to play at blastissimo.

The Conn 36K of old is clearly the best of these, being the fiberglass version of the 14K. The 14K was and still is a superb instrument, and what the fiberglass version loses takes some real skill to exploit. I don't know about the Martin mentioned above, but while I can think of sousaphones more collectible or historically interesting or even fun to toot on, I can't think of one I'd rather play in an actual performance where it counted.

Rick "who has a 14K for those rare situations" Denney

bloke wrote: The King 2370 fiberglass souaphone is the lightest weight, most in-tune, most damage-resistant, has a super-fast replacement parts supply line, and offers a clear-yet-big sound.

Any idea where I can find a used one? I remember seeing a gold colored one a few years ago when I didn't need one.

Conn 22K hands down. There are 2 refurbished ones on eBay the last time I looked. Shouldn't be hard to find two more. Seems like they are always popping up somewhere. They sound almost identical to the metal 20K in my opinion. We played them back in school and just recently I heard a section of them. I couldn't believe how good they sounded.

bloke wrote:[T]he world today is not the same world in which you and I grew up.

What bloke said.

Yes, we are all familiar with the J. P. Sousa quote from 1922, "It was immediately taken up by other instrument makers, and is today manufactured in its greatest degree of perfection by the C. G. Conn Company, of Elkhart, Ind."

That was then. This is now. The sousaphones that J. P. Sousa referred to were the upright bell "raincatcher" sousaphones that he utilized in his band, no longer made.

If you must buy new, today, buy King.