The earliest history of the fiberglass Sousaphone

[Dave Detwiler]

Hi all - on my day off yesterday, I explored the earliest history of the fiberglass Sousaphone and here's what I learned:

https://tubapastor.blogspot.com/2023/03 ... -1961.html

If you have any historical details to add to the story, share those in this thread - thanks!

1962-03-25 The Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho.jpg (143.88 KiB) Viewed 991 times

[bloke]

That's a great article, and thanks for sharing it. The only thing that I get tired of is people over-stating the average weight of a sousaphone.

We already had at least one 36k when I walked into the band room in 1968. I wonder when they got it. Perhaps that year.

[bort2.0]

"Base horn"

[bloke]

"Base horn"

Come on Brett,
That's not as bad as "beartone".

[bloke]

“Only one in the state…

…Idaho”

In 1962, the entire state of Idaho, a rather large chunk of land, had just under 700,000 people.

I’m thinking that towns even having a full band program back then was somewhat rare. That contra-alto clarinet is still pretty rare.

Another fun find and great article, @Dave Detwiler!

[bloke]

In 1969, somehow our band director came up with two used Holton fiberglass sousaphones to put with the two or three Conn fiberglass sousaphones that we had. Our brass sousaphones had suddenly/mysteriously disappeared, and all that we had left in brass was one very heavy King , as Kings were built so thick in the 1950s. Those Holton fiberglass sousaphones probably came from the Board of Education warehouse, because we didn't have any band parent money to buy stuff I like that. Those Holton fiberglass sousaphones looked pretty darn old. I couldn't have imagined those Holton sousaphones being less than a decade old. I also remember being disappointed in them, because the open D and D flat were so flat on them. They had to have been awfully flat, for me to notice - being barely past being a beginner, although I had already spent quite a few years - by that time - tuning guitars.
Just for what it's worth, the only tuba that the school owned was an old King 1240 with an upright bell and completely worn out valves. It still sounded pretty good, even though it leaked horribly. I started using that tuba when I was in the 12th grade to play in the city's youth orchestra. (There were girls who played in that orchestra who went to schools from better neighborhoods, and they weren't so interested in getting married immediately out of high school, so I thought that might be a pretty good thing to become involved with - even though I wasn't particularly interested in playing the tuba.) I took valves out of the King sousaphone (which we still had that many years later), but they didn't do much better because the casings were also worn. I believe there was someone at the Board of Education repair shop who would wrap tight rags around metal rods, load those rags up with buffing compound, stick them on a drill, and polish the holy crap out of valve casings via that horrible method - thus ruining quite a few sets of valve casings for quite a few schools' instruments.

[tofu]

.

[bloke]

love the c. 1990's (??) KING pebble finish with the aluminum body ferrules and only two acorn nuts to remove the valveset.

They are THE lightest, and THE best in tune (and require THE least amount of energy to play them WAY too loud ).

(I'm a convert - from being a Conn sousaphone guy...OTHER THAN a couple of remarkable 4-valve Conn not-fiberglass 28K E-flats that I've played - and adjusted their circuit lengths for optimum intonation.)

[Jperry1466]

In 1965, as a freshman in high school, I played on one of two brand new Olds fiberglass Sousaphones. I was pretty small and remember being knocked down by a big wind gust, when the band director showed much more concern for the welfare of the instrument than for me. Later that same school year, he bought our first upright tuba, a 3-valve compensating Besson. I don't remember the model, but it had a small shank mouthpiece and the infamous ball on the bottom bow, which could do some damage if one wasn't careful.

In 1973, when I marched as a grad student at Kentucky, we had either Conn or King fiberglass sousas, which Rex Conner dubbed "Dixie Cup Sousaphones", and they did sound remarkably similar to blowing in a paper Dixie cup. I remember them as being Kings; David Gilbreath remembers them as Conn. He's probably right, since I was only in that marching band one year.

[Rick Denney]

My high school was built in 1962, and was part of the third generation of suburban schools built in Houston. It possessed three tubas when I started attending in 1972: an old Conn 36K in gold fiberglass, a much newer King 2380 in white fiberglass, and a terribly battered Besson Stratford, which was a dumpster-dive gift for me upon graduation. The Besson was not compensated, but it did have the unmanning device on the bottom bow.

I'm sure there had to have been other sousaphones similar to the Conn, because the band had more than two tuba players in the marching band in the years before I attended. But I never saw them.

My junior high school, of about the same age as the high school, had a similar complement of sousas.

I had the sense at the time that the Kings were newer than the Conns, but they could not have been that much newer--the high school was only a decade old when I first attended.

Rick "who painted the Conn white so it would match the King" Denney