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I'm talking with a head band director about selling them several old bloke's attic 20K sousaphones and restoring a few of theirs, which defines completely straightening out and putting a satin silver finish on roughly 10 of them. Anderson doesn't want to do the finishing anymore, so we would have to use our own cabinet. Fortunately we have one, and it's big as well as a great big old Devilbiss compressor. I might be teaching my son low pressure sandblasting techniques.

The pistons/casings on at least a couple of those - that already belong to the school - are really worn, so the job becomes more and more interesting... either rebuilding, or me digging back into my parts and finding some donor short action valvesets.

Stay tuned.

TEN 20K's

That'd just be 200K.

About 100k actually.

The new thin crappy ones - with the rough-surfaces pistons - cost dealers over $9K, now.

If some dealer is willing to have a school harass them about waiting and waiting - and threatening to cancel the order and buy JP (which are probably the best choice, these days, and - yup - I sell a bunch of 'em), I suppose a dealer might be willing to bid around $10,000 or $10,500 each on them...so Mike is correct.

Though these old ones will feature thicker bodies, thicker slide tubing and better valves, they have not yet become like Mark VI saxophones (ie. whereby old remarkable condition ones sell for more than new Selmer, Paris saxophones), so I'll have to sell them for less then the cost of new ones...but it will be a ton of work. Again, I'm hoping I can set up my son with ear protection and a stool - in front of the sandblast cabinet. With old scratched instruments, a glass bead finish HIDES scratches, whereas a gloss finish requires buffing the Sh!t out of instruments - resulting in thin instruments - which will likely soon show red-rot or spider cracks. ALSO, half of mine (and all of the school's) are factory satin finished, and it's difficult as hell to buff that finish down to a gloss finish (which ALSO removes a tremendous amount of material from an instrument.) People who buy old Conn instruments which are made of "low (80:20) brass" and lacquered, are buying FORMERLY satin silver finished instruments which (again) have had the Sh!t buffed out of them.

Is there a "golden era" for 20Ks?

I played on one from the 90s when I was in high school band in the 00s. I thought it was fine... didn't know much else.

arpthark wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:09 am Is there a "golden era" for 20Ks?

I played on one from the 90s when I was in high school band in the 00s. I thought it was fine... didn't know much else.

ONE of them - that I might end up selling (if this becomes a "thing"...??) was made in Texas. I looked it over before I bought it (quite a few years ago), and it's OK...JUST AS some of the Conn model 8D French horns (made in Texas) were OK...and SOME OF the Conn model 88H/72H/62H/78H/6H/44H (etc.) trombones made in Texas were "OK". Texas (mostly) used Elkhart tooling/designs, but with inexperienced labor...and "labor" rather than "craftsmen".

One or two that I'm selling are hybrids - 26" bell model 38K's (that I bought with worn-out standard pistons - the 38K and 20K bodies being the SAME, with possibly only some brace styling being a bit different) and I stuck GOOD (fiberglass) 22K short-action valvesets in the cases with them before shoving them into the attic.

Checking back through my own stock (yesterday), I also saw that at least one (which I purchased as a "genuine" 20K) had been purchased with worn valves, but that I had sent it off to Dave Secrist, the valves were rebuilt, and then I stuck it in the attic with the rest of them.

If this works out (??), it could be good for me, because (in the past) these (restored ones) weren't bringing enough dough to really motivate me, though (watching what was occurring with the brand new ones - over the years) I suspected that their value would go up - in relation to the pricing of brand new ones.

ALL OF THAT having been said...
The post-2020 top-down engineered hyperinflation simply means that (regardless of how many dollars someone has) those dollars aren't worth a damn, and - when receiving MORE dollars that are only spending like roughly HALF that number of dollars spent only a handful of years ago - the HIGHER NUMBER of dollars received defines a HIGHER PERCENTAGE of government confiscation of those dollars...though the government didn't remove any of the dents, didn't fix any of the moving parts issues, didn't sandblast any of the surfaces, didn't silver plate any of the instruments, didn't drive to-and-from Indiana with them, and didn't hang around in some armpit yankee town for several days waiting for the instruments to be processed.

You fix ten 20K's, and whaddaya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go:
I owe my gain to the government whores.

Tennessee Earnings Forked

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 11:04 am ...
Though these old ones will feature thicker bodies, thicker slide tubing and better valves, they have not yet become like Mark VI saxophones (ie. whereby old remarkable condition ones sell for more than new Selmer, Paris saxohphone), so I'll have to sell them for less then the cost of new ones....

If any particular model of old sousaphone was to be the 'Mark VI saxophone' of sousaphones, wouldn't that obviously be the 14k?

shots fired.

I've personally become a fan of old King sousaphones...possibly when the were SLIGHTLY lighter-weight than the 1950's (NOT the paper-thin ones, which have been the rule for a few decades, now), and yet were STILL were made with excellent valves.

I also like the two-acorn-screws/aluminum-body-ferrules, actual-fiberglass generation (which called for the low-profile neck) of King fiberglass sousaphones.

They're less work to play, play better in tune that Conn, and put out that "commercial" (WHACK!) type of sound needed for NOLA brass band work...YET without killing oneself.

THAT HAVING BEEN SAID...
Since I have a satin silver (silver intact, but lots of dents to remove) 14K body ("Pan American") and a compatible lacquer-removed 36K REBUILT (including valves) valveset (both of which cost me very little), the sousaphone that I probably end up REPLACING the sparklephone with will PROBABLY be one assembled from the parts listed in this sentence...

...MOSTLY (these days) when I play NOLA brass band gigs, I play them with peeps who are OK with me (simply) playing "VERY LOUD" vs. "STUPID OVER-THE-TOP LOUD".

So this then?

cjk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 12:22 pm If any particular model of old sousaphone was to be the 'Mark VI saxophone' of sousaphones, wouldn't that obviously be the 14k?

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 12:43 pm yep

cjk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 12:58 pm So this then?

cjk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 12:22 pm If any particular model of old sousaphone was to be the 'Mark VI saxophone' of sousaphones, wouldn't that obviously be the 14k?

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 12:43 pm yep

btw...There's this guy in Greater Atlanta who's offering to sell me 20 MTS sousaphone cases...

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 1:00 pm

cjk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 12:58 pm So this then?

cjk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 12:22 pm If any particular model of old sousaphone was to be the 'Mark VI saxophone' of sousaphones, wouldn't that obviously be the 14k?

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 12:43 pm yep

btw...There's this guy in Greater Atlanta who's offering to sell me 20 MTS sousaphone cases...

how many of those will fit in a minivan?

cjk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 1:02 pm

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 1:00 pm

cjk wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 12:58 pm So this then?

btw...There's this guy in Greater Atlanta who's offering to sell me 20 MTS sousaphone cases...

how many of those will fit in a minivan?

...or in a basement/garage for 12 years...??

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 1:17 pm ...or in a basement/garage for 12 years...??

me casa su casa

extremely generous, but - just for complete clarification - a joke

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Mar 30, 2023 1:22 pm extremely generous, but - just for complete clarification - a joke

I'm slow sometimes, but I did some spatial math in my head and figured so.