what ever happened to those kelly PT50 copies?

me · Post by me » Sat Jun 18, 2005 1:59 pm

any news?

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 5:45 pm

None yet. Last I was told was that they were being developed.

That was a long time ago, of course.

corbasse · Post by **corbasse** » Sun Jun 19, 2005 7:27 am

The last time I mailed them about it (in april) they said it would be available by the end of this year.

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 5:26 pm

Got it! Apparently had some trouble with shipping it, though... take a look:

oh, wait... what is this... It's CHOCOLATE!

*whew*

Okay, here's the actual Lexan KT-50 tuba mouthpiece:

It's been a while since I've played on my PT-50, so I'll give this to one of the guys at work so he can compare it to his own.

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 9:23 pm

They've got a batch of 50-100 of them -- go ahead & contact them directly.

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Tue Aug 23, 2005 9:39 pm

Some backstory to this:

When we played at DCI Finals last year, I asked Jim Kelly (who had a booth in the souvie/expo area) about making them. I gave them my PT50, they took measurements & everything and shipped it back, and it took until this summer to get the tooling & molds together (who knows if they had copyright issues, too; I doubt it, though).

We were at this year's DCI finals too, and when I stopped by the Kelly booth, Jim said that they just finished the first batch, but he ended up not adding any to the stuff that he brought along. So, they mailed it out to me soon afterwards.

When we were discussing this last year, Jim was saying that it wouldn't have to be a high-dollar custom job -- that it would be probably the regular price. The PT50 is a relatively widespread model, so he was thinking that they could still sell enough to cover the costs (which is why custom molds are usually so expensive) and make some money.

When he was getting started, he did say that he would have to work on getting an extra-large blank, because the exterior of the PT50 is so much larger than what he used for the Helleberg- & Bach-based mouthpieces. That was part of the holdup, but it seems to be taken care of.

Doug@GT · Post by **Doug@GT** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 3:27 pm

I just got any email update from Kelly Mouthpieces, probably because I just did the only survey thing. They've got the PT-50 listed as one of the "Possible future additions to our line-up."

They also call it the Kelly KT-50, which for some reason I find to be very funny

Leland, that chocolate thing is really neat. How'd you come by that?

Leland · Post by **Leland** » Wed Aug 24, 2005 4:58 pm

Doug@GT wrote:Leland, that chocolate thing is really neat. How'd you come by that?

They included it in the envelope -- I guess it's one of the other new additions to their lineup.. lol

I think this may officially still be at the prototype stage, but it seems to be fine. One of the players at work said that attacks seemed to feel a bit softer than with his regular PT50, but other than that it plays pretty much the same.

I briefly showed it to Tom Holtz, and he's pretty interested -- they use Kellybergs on their sousaphones (in the Marine Band) these days, so a KT-50 would be a logical choice.