King Jumbo Sousaphone

[Steven Noel]

Hi I was wondering if anyone out there has ever seen , owns , or played one ?? i have 2 of the Conn jumbos and would like to know how they compare or differ etc ? thanks in advance for any info .
Steve.

[Shockwave]

You have two Conn jumbo sousaphones? One for each shoulder? If you ever want to sell one let me know!

Here's a collage I slapped together from various pictures stolen from the net. It shows a bunch of different monsterous sousaphones plus a 6/4 Holton bell front tuba for size comparison all at the same scale. The bell collar is 8" on the Holton tuba and 9.5" on a Conn jumbo.



-Eric

[Sean Greene]

Here's a collage I slapped together from various pictures stolen from the net.

-Eric

Great collage!
For those of you out there who like to see big, heavy sousaphones, Paul Haugan has a York 'Monster' sousaphone and it is a HOSS. It weighs more than any tuba I have ever lifted and it's huge. I think it's in such good shape because no normal person could carry it through a parade by themselves. There are pictures of it on tubanews.com in the photo galleries and he talks about it a little bit in the interview. Keep in mind that Paul is a big dude (he's like, 6'9'' or something) so that Sousaphone looks kind of normal on him....

Sean

[ThomasP]

I think he has sold it already. When I was in his shop earlier in the week, he was cleaning it. I believe he said it was sold.

[Lew]

#3 is the famous Interlochen-owned Conn, is it not?

You are correct. Give that man a prize.

I also had a "jumbo" York sousaphone, although they didn't use that term to describe them. Mine had a 28" bell, 0.750" bore, and weighed a ton. It doesn't look that large, but the bell collar was over 9". It also had the largest tuning bits I have ever seen. Here's a photo:



It required a mouthpiece shank the size of those very large Alexanders. Vladamir at Dillons made an adapter that allowed me to use standard American shank mouthpieces that you can almost make out in the photo. The horn took a ton of air, and was not something anyone could reasonably march with, but it played pretty well in tune. I can only imagine what it would have been like to play with a mouthpiece with the original shank diameter if it had a backbore proportional to the total size.

[AndyL]

#3 is presently at Elkhart (IN) County Historical Museum. I thought it was at Interlochen, too, but was told otherwise when I was there for Keith Brion's Sousa concert July 4.

Here's the info from the museum website:

This sousaphone is a commemorative instrument, produced on the 50th anniversary of the Conn company in 1924. It is gold plated with silver highlights. The engraving depicts scenes of Conn's history. The engraving was done by one of Conn's master engravers, Julius Sternberg. It took him three weeks.

This instrument is on display at the Elkhart County Historical Museum, which is located in the Rush Memorial Center at:

304 West Vistula
P.O. Box 434
Bristol, IN 46507
Phone (574) 848-4322

[Shockwave]

Has anyone ever seen one of the huge old Buescher sousaphones?

You mean they made one bigger than than #2 up there in the picture? That thing is easily the match of the King and Conn. I remember seeing an online ad not long ago for a Martin sousaphone in New Orleans with a purported 12" bell collar. If that's true it would have to be the biggest of the jumbos.

-Eric