Getzen CB-50 origins?

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tylerferris1213
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Getzen CB-50 origins?

Post by tylerferris1213 »

Hello everyone,

The internet offers a wealth of information, but as everyone here knows, it's hard to sift through all that information when it comes to researching tubas. I recently purchased a Getzen CB (Canadian Brass) 50 model CC tuba. It sounds beautiful, and I've heard that it is one of the best quintet horns a person can buy. I heard that it was originally designed from a cut horn. I was wondering if anyone on here knows anything else about it. I like to know the history behind my tubas. Thanks!
Tyler Ferris
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tylerferris1213
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Re: Getzen CB-50 origins?

Post by tylerferris1213 »

Is it also true that they incorporated King tuba parts as well?
Tyler Ferris
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Re: Getzen CB-50 origins?

Post by tofu »

the elephant wrote: the details of the valve set look a lot more like my Olds O-98 (not the O-99) than that of a King set. The ports are identical.
Wade, I thought the same, but Lee Stofer stopped by my place a few weeks ago. As you may know he bought up the remaining parts/tools from Getzen for the CB/GB-50 and will be building his own horns. He said he plans on having two at the Army Conference. We got to talking about his new venture/plans and I asked him if he had gotten a lot valve sets and he said yes. I then asked who they were made by and he believed they were of German origin. Which isn't too surprising I guess since a lot of the parts for the CB/GB-50 were sourced through MW and they had a longstanding interaction with Getzen.
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Re: Getzen CB-50 origins?

Post by cjk »

Here's a relevant thread from old tubenet:
http://www.chisham.com/tips/bbs/jan2002 ... 81154.html" target="_blank

Brief information in a Bub Rusk interview:
http://www.iteaonline.org, in an interview with Bob Rusk done by Carole Nowicke wrote:
Nowicke: What happened with the horn that Harvey was supposed to make?

Rusk: I think you can still buy one. When the Canadian Brass started their band instrument company, everybody thought it was “cute” because nobody thought that they would be the biggies. Well, that kind of failed, or they lost interest, but that ended. Then the Getzen Company (who was making most of their instruments anyway, or finishing them and selling them from Elkhorn) looked at some of the horns that were developed by the Canadians and said “Why don’t we just keep making those,” they took the tuba, which is the York 3/4 CC that I do. We hit the market about 1994 or ‘95 with that. I said at the time, “I wonder how long it will be before everybody else has a tuba in the same niche.” It took longer than I thought, but here it is five years later. Bach never makes tubas, but I’d be surprised if they don’t come along, just to compete in that same niche.

I had heard that the G50 was a copy of an instrument which Bob Rusk had made, not a copy of an instrument that Chuck Daellenbach had necessarily commissioned. I thought that the 3/4ish York cut was something that Bob Rusk somewhat regularly did and that Mister Chuck got one. I'm not certain that all of this is true, it's just what I heard. I also thought that the instruments that Mr Rusk made were built from the bugle and bell of York model 400 (??) BBb tubas (which share the same bell as a York Monster EEb and are pretty much the same size) like these:

ImageImage

(the pictures are from Dale Hale's site http://best-intown.com/CoolTubas/CoolTubas.htm" target="_blank)
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Re: Getzen CB-50 origins?

Post by Tom »

TheHatTuba wrote:Does anyone have a better picture of the original Rusk "G50" than the one on the cover of Canadian Brass Noel? The porting looks like the valveset was taken from a top action horn, very Kanstul-like.
That's not the "original." The so-called original was satin silver and made almost entirely of vintage parts, mostly York. At one time it was owned by a poster that was active on Tubenet. I seem to recall that the tuba was in the Pacific NW, but it's been years.

The one on the Noel album is one of the 4-valve CC tubas that Daellenbach had done for him when the CB-50 was just being rolled out. He has owned several variations of it, most with 4 valves, but some with and without carbon fiber bells, etc. George McCracken made those bells, by the way.

To this day Chuck Daellenbach is a huge fan of all things York. I've talked to him several times about the CB-50 tuba and he has always described it as "the tuba York could have built but never actually did" as York manufactured all of the parts needed, just never assembled them in that combination. The .689 bore is also what Daellenbach feels is the magic number for the valve set.

I don't know if the "original" existed and THEN Chuck saw it or if he actually commissioned Rusk to built it for him, but either way, that's essentially how the horn came to be. As others have mentioned it's a combination of vintage American tuba parts, mainly York Eb parts.

The production horns were produced, almost entirely, by Meinl Weston. They supposedly still have the bell mandrel in their inventory, too. Production valvesets were sourced through MW, but I don't know if they actually manufactured them.

And yes, Lee Stofer has the tooling to build these horns now. Likely with improvements.
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