Very first tuba/sousa, or baritone horn/euph you played

[catgrowlB]

Very first sousa that I played was a Continental Colonial (Pan American stencil). And the first tuba I played was an old Yamaha 102. The defunct one with the odd mouthpipe.

That was back in middle school, in the early-mid 1990s.
But still remember it clearly.

Discuss yours

[gocsick]

First baritone was a bell front Bundy that was a rental from the music shop in 6th grade. I started as trumpet but my band director told me my lips were too big and told my parents to switch me to baritone. They were not happy with the difference in monthly rental price between the trumpet and baritone. I remember lugging that heavy plywood case on the school bus back and forth every day from 6th through 8th grade.

I don't play tuba until high school..I was loaned a very nice playing King Fiberglass sousa for home and for marching/concert band we used brand new King 1140MW convertible tubas.. which were not particularly great for either. That would have been 1990.

[bloke]

It was in the beginning of the second semester of 7th grade beginner band, and it was some old dirty brown sousaphone, with a nasty chipped up school mouthpiece.

I had been playing trumpet (a school owned brown Olds Ambassador trumpet in a slimline tan plastic case with sliding cylinder latches... We were sold 7C mouthpieces with the name brand "Peak" on them for $5 (which was way the hell too much for a knockoff mouthpiece in 1968...but I was really proud of that trumpet mouthpiece, because it was new and shiny and silver) and the band director - by the beginning of the second semester - was starting a bunch of chatter about everyone having to buy their own personal instruments. I didn't want to have that conversation with my dad, so I agreed to switch to the "bass horn".

A 12th grade baritone horn player named Buddy Heathcock took me into a practice room - and after several tries - got me to play an F and a low B-flat, and then stuck me back out into the band room with everyone else. I sort of had an idea of bass clef from having had three years of class piano lessons in the second, third, and fourth grades in the basement of my elementary school... but I wasn't strong on bass clef at all.

After I was stuck back out in the beginner class of about 75 kids in our baby boomer jam-packed school (after barely producing an F and a B-flat back in the practice room), the band director ran all the way (back) through the green Belwin beginner book (the one with those weird shapes on the cover). It was very stressful and I didn't do very well. When we got about 2/3 of the way through (yes we went through the entire green book in about 20 minutes) and I started getting frustrated and confused, he said, "son, we're doing this for you."

(This school was a junior/senior high school, which had previously been expanded with an entire new wing to accommodate the growing population of children during the baby boom, but even then it was only designed to hold 2,000 students, and - at that time - there were 3,600 students in the school. The city can barely afford to keep the schools open, and there was no talk of adding any air conditioning to classrooms, there was no toilet paper and the boys rooms - never, and -with your nice schools today with dwarf bermuda turf growing all around the buildings - we had powdery dust.)

I had been making grades of like 100% every time we had a test (trumpet), and my grades in band dropped down to somewhere in the "B" range for at least two of the last three 6 weeks grading periods, but I think - by the last 6 weeks of the year - I'd gotten the hang of it pretty well.

I've told everyone here about one really strong player who was a year older than me, but there was actually another who was in the a year older than him, and both of them ended up being all state players. It didn't occur to my band director to have either of them mentor me or anything like that. Back then, everyone was pretty much expected to sink or swim on their own, to figure out their own solutions, and find their own help if they needed it... But very few people sought out help and just worked hard to get through their their struggles.

Circling around back to the beginning, yeah the make and model of the sousaphone was "dirty brown"... but - notable - not dented up.

I bought my first personal mouthpiece in the 10th grade I think, or maybe the 11th. I think it was a Helleberg 7B. Prior to that, I think I had a chipped up mouthpiece that was stamped "Made in Austria". My dad made jokes about it looking like it was a funnel for a urinal.

[arpthark]

Started on a student Holton trombone in 5th grade (still have it, and still teach beginner trombone lessons on it), and switched to tuba in 6th. It was a big, smelly, silver Yamaha 201. Pretty tall for me now as an adult and way too tall for me as a little kid. I had to sit on textbooks or prop myself up by sitting on my own foot to reach the mouthpiece. I was tutored in the band room bathroom by a highschooler who was my hero, made all state on tuba and played bass in the school jazz band. I was pretty awestruck.

I had been first chair trombone and the trombone section needed some reinforcement in one of the pieces we were doing that semester I switched, so I actually played both trombone and tuba on our concert.

That summer I was allowed to take home a horrible, maligned silver Conn 15J to practice on. It had a hopelessly smashed bell with holes and rips, and the leadpipe had been fastened on the body with crumbling duct tape (later replaced by yours truly with clear packing tape), and black electrical tape all over all the water keys. But I played it all summer and pretty much taught myself all of the Standard of Excellence books we had been using.

In seventh and eighth grade, I got to "graduate" to the Cerveny 681 that the bigger kids played, and the school later bought a set of new Cerveny 686s (larger bell) when I was in high school, so I rounded out my scholastic career on those Cervenys. The 681 played better than the 686, fwiw.

[Kevbach33]

I started band on tuba in 6th grade, and would bounce back and forth between an old small Besson (small shank, but no small shank mouthpieces available, not like I knew better) and one or two Yamaha 103's. I believe I played mostly on a Bach 25. There were no other tuba players in the middle school band program that year.

In 7th grade, I got my first Sousaphone experience, on a modern King 2370 (resin).

I didn't pick up the slide thing until 8th grade, when I switched from bass guitar in jazz band.

[arpthark]

Oh yeah, sousaphones -- my high school marched 20Ks, and I started the band in 8th grade. Too heavy!

[Sousaswag]

I started on a Yamaha YBB-103 when I was a curious euphonium student.

Later on, my first sousaphone played was an old yellowed Conn 36K.

My first full sized tuba was a Yamaha 641 (Ew)

[Mary Ann]

First brass was an old WWII very smashed up Army bugle from someone's attic. It had been given to a neighborhood boy and I talked him out of it (his parents were not happy; I think I was 8 or 10 or so.) I blew and blew and BLEW into that thing and did not get a sound, except once just a tiny buzz -- I tried everything, lips around the cup, lips in the cup, someone had told me "you need a lot of air to play that thing." So I blew and blew -- and couldn't figure it out. Then my dad came home from work, I asked him can you play this thing, and he took it and played a note. I said HOW DID YOU DO THAT? and he buzzed his lips. I never would have figured it out, and my dad was a hero.
But first baritone -- I was in music school, decided to take some music ed classes, and had four weeks of baritone in the brass part of the semester. I was able to play some stuff -- for the final I did a section from one of the Mozart horn concertos, in a comfortable key, but it was pretty low level.

[MiBrassFS]

.

[the elephant]

For a short time in 8th grade, I asked to try the euphonium. (I was in the 1st Trumpet section.) The director issued me the same model all the advanced band kids received, which was a Besson Imperial 3+1 comp. All our tubas were also 3+1 Imperials. The youngr kids were issued Olds bent bell "baritones" with three valves.

In high school, halfway through 9th grade, I asked to try the tuba. (I did this as a favor to the 9th Grade Band's only tuba player, who moved away right before contest and asked that I cover his tuba parts so he would not feel guilty.) My director issued me a "white rat" Conn 22K from the early 1970s. Over on TubeNet, Marty Neilan quoted me in a post from decades ago, and despite "the great post purge" done by the current "cyber slumlords" a part of my post survived in that quote.

My first experience playing a tuba was when I switched over from trumpet and was sent to a practice room with one of the more beat up white rats, a tuner, a metronome, a pencil and a copy of Ebby's Scientific Method for BBb Bass. I thought the thing was pretty cool. But when I was ready to make my debut with the band I walked into the hall with one of those wonderful silver horns. I was hooked on tuba for life that day. I had never been happier.

It made me happy to see something from my twenty-four years of posting in that community that has survived being cancelled.

Anyway, once I was ready for my big debut with the band, the 22K went home to be my practice instrument. I was issued a beautiful, silver plated 1964 Conn 14K sousaphone. I loved that thing.

When I moved up to the "A" band in 10th grade I kept the two sousaphones, was issued a second "white rat" as a home-use horn, and a 1968 Mirafone 186-4U. This was in 1980, but all of the instruments were in immaculate condition. They had never been overhauled; the kids back then had a DEEP RESPECT for the equipment we were allowed to use FOR FREE (no "rental fees" no "band fees") and we took super-good care of all our instruments.

We used the "white rats" for marching band rehearsals at all times except for game or performance days. We used the nearly dent-free silver horns for all performances. This helped to prevent wear to the moving parts and the plating and cut down on opportunities for us to bang them up.

Since our football team was always in the Texas playoffs, our marching season usually ran through Thanksgiving. Between then and Christmas break all we did was sightread heavy band literature, play Bach chorales, and work in that book by Nilo Hovey. Right before Christmas break we switched to concert instruments and auditioned for the Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Bands. There was a Concert Band, too, when we had enough players. My tuba in the Wind Ensemble was issued to me at that time in 1980. It was a very nice example of a 1968 Mirafone 186-4U BBb that was undented but very scratched up, missing several patches of lacquer in the usual spots. I loved that tuba and played the thing to death.

Later, when I became the section leader in 12th grade (1982), I was issued a BRAND NEW (made in 1975 but never issued to a student and still in the plastic bag in the still-new-smelling wooden case with BROWN Tolex). I took that thing all over Texas for contests and festivals that I participated in. It was so nice to have a "new" tuba. Chem cleans were still not that common back then in my school system, so all my tubas tasted like 20 years of school lunches—you know, that "school tuba taste" that we all hate) and this one was up to that time UNTOUCHED, not even any scratches.

The director was so worried that I might try to keep the horn (thanks for that vote of confidence, Mr. Vanderhider) that after the TSSEC in Austin, he came to my house to take it back. School was out, I had graduated, and I had no car to get it back to the school, so he swung by the house to make sure I didn't decide that it would be easier to just keep his "new" tuba.

Nice.

Whatever.

He and my mom hated each other, so this may have been more directed at her rather than me, but I was dismayed to make the two mile walk home from my job at Pizza Hut to find him sitting on the front stoop. He was sort of a "creepy old dude" and my 14-year-old sister would not let him come in because she was alone in the house, heh, heh…)

So those were my firsts, instrument-wise. I hope someone got some entertainment from seeing how things were done back in the day. I never paid one cent to be in band. I had to fund-raise constantly because we took a lot of trips. But that was it. We had top shelf instruments, we used them for free, and we took amazing care of them. We even received classes on care and maintenance. ALL of us were expected to clean and service our horns, and if one of them broke we had to turn it in with a repair request form and it would be picked up by the music store road rep and brought back when the work was completed, with the SCHOOL DISTRICT footing the bill—NOT the booster organization.

Good times, good times…



Here I am with my best friend in the world back then. He is wearing my mom's "aqua mask" and I am, of course, modeling the bell of that first Conn 22K the very day I brought it home, so this would be when I had become ready for my first band rehearsal after my self-guided tuba-learning misadventure and had the silver 14K issued for school use. About an hour after this photo was taken my sister had dumped the contents of my sock and underwear drawers into the bell. This was taken in the Spring of 1980. I had been a tuba player for about three months, having switched from trumpet in December of 1979.

[b.williams]

School owned Conn 20I Artist Bell Front Bb Euphonium. I switched from trumpet at the beginning of 9th grade.
University owned Alexander 163 bb tuba. Found in instrument storage room. I had a key and could discover stuff.

[the elephant]

@b.williams

All hail, the mighty Alexander 163! WOOT!!!

If I were to go back to BBb tubas like @bloke I would search hard for a BBb 5-valved 163 with the best intonation I could find. Perhaps one of the new ones. (This is a fantasy, after all…) This would replace my Mirafone 186-5U CC as I like the Alex more.

To replace the Holton and YamaYork I would at least look at a Miraphone 98 like Joe has, but would probably just get one of the big Wessex BBb horns like the Prokofiev—after some serious play-testing. I would also consider looking at an Eastman BBb analog to the 836 (if they have one).

[bloke]

Our school had two or three 36k fiberglass sousaphones.
I sort of think they might have been made at the tail end of Elkhart days, because I think it will probably bought in 1968 or 1967.
We had a couple of older Holton fiberglass which had a kind of a interesting sound, but a really flat fifth partial D and D flat that I even noticed at that tender age and point of musical immaturity... Not being a snooty poot - but being a guitar player since I was five or six years old, maybe I was a little bit more sensitive to tuning than some. Anyway, the Holtons kind of sat in the back unplayed.
When I ended up in the youth symphony in the 12th grade, I didn't want to show up with a sousaphone. There was one King brass sousaphone that played well and had good valves, but I took those valves and put them in a upright bell King 1240 3 valve tuba with school system-ruined valve casings... It was the only tuba that the school had. (I feel certain that some middle-aged imbecile polished the crap out of them with a drill and a tight rag wrapped on a stick with brown tripoli polishing compound on it and just went after those casings until they were hopelessly bad.)
I could still manage to play the 1240 with the sousaphone pistons in it, and managed to be picked for first seat in the all state band that year - thus keeping up the straight "1st chair" run for our poor redneck high school since about 6 years previous straight through. (Had I not done this, all those who did it before me would have considered me to be a clod, and that would have stuck with me... so I had to do it.) The chair was kept one more year by young man who followed me who had a personally owned recording bell King 1241.
I still considered tuba to be a class at school and not really an instrument to pursue, but I felt obligated to keep the chair at my poor redneck high school, so I practiced very hard with that King tuba to make sure that I held onto the all-state chair, even though it was difficult to play.

Towards the end of that year, the guy in the Memphis Symphony - who is still in that chair today if you can believe it - told them to hire me to sub for him in an April concert where they played the Stravinsky "The Fairy's Kiss" ballet suite (a concert piece, and I don't think it's actually called a "suite" by Stravinsky... I'm thinking: "divertimento").

I think that was 1974, it paid about $350, and at that point I decided to consider buying a tuba and to slip over from being a sort of working guitar player to a sort of working tuba player and maybe even go to school and get some free tuba lessons (because I knew I could go to school for nothing). The fact that playing the tuba paid so much more - and that it's so much easier to play than guitar (as well as the sheet music being so much easier to read, and not to mention that it's only one note at a time) - were the two obvious attracts.

I had a few thousand dollars banked - by the middle of the 12th grade - from playing cocktail party (and USO) solo guitar jobs, that Symphony job, and hustling cigarettes and counterfeit assembly and pep rally tickets at school and such, so the choice was spending a couple of thousand dollars (1974) on a Spanish-made Ramirez classical guitar, or a couple thousand dollars on a Miraphone tuba from Germany... I bought a tuba.

[humBell]

Miraphone 186, i think? Band also had a ybb-321.

And my $100 craigslist Hüttl sousa, i think? Although maybe i borrowed a 36k for a parade before i got that?

At what point did i get past just blowing and could be considered to actually play?

[iiipopes]

As a freshman in high school, I volunteered to play sousaphone for the football field - 1st generation King 'glass. It was an old horn then. That was August, 1976.

As a junior in summer high school band camp at the regional university, to save my trumpet lips for co-lead in the jazz band section, I volunteered to play baritone in the concert band section when nobody else showed up. The college issued me a King baritone for the week. I ended up with a solo when the bass clef and treble clef charts of one of the pieces were different. That was summer 1979. The faculty passing out the music asked which clef I played. They looked like deer-in-the-headlights when I said either, only replying, "Yes, but which one?" I finally said they might be different, please send back both folders. They shook their heads. Evidently, they had never had a student before who could read both.

[hrender]

Last day of 10th grade, late May 1977. Drafted to play tuba since I could read bass clef (cello) and was "big enough to carry a sousaphone." First horn was a 3v Besson comp BBb. I got 10min of instruction on how to blow a note and was shown basic fingering, then I was sent home with the horn and a Rubank Elementary Tuba book. I had to carry it home (~1.5mi) because it was too large to easily fit on the bus. When summer band started a month later, I was expected to play along with the rest of the section. First few weeks were rough, but I learned quickly enough.

For marching band practice we had decrepit fiberglass Conn sousaphones that were held together with spit and duct tape. For actual marching band performances we had silver King 1250s, while the Bessons were used for concert band.

[tadawson]

Early 70's (maybe late 60's) fibreglass Conn Sousa (no idea the specific model - it was a school horn) with a Conn 2 mouthpiece. (I wouldn't mind having one of those again . . . ) Played it '75 through '83 or so.

[Heavy_Metal]

All hail, the mighty Alexander 163! WOOT!!!

No, I wasn't that lucky! Our school system had Olds O-99 tubas and the Reynolds equivalent, with whatever mouthpieces came with them.

In high school we marched King fiberglass sousas- I don't remember the model number. But that was also when I heard my first Alex- some recent grads would sit in for summer rehearsals, and when @Mark E. Chachich showed up with his brand-new 163CC, we definitely took notice. I remember thinking "if I ever grow up, I want an Alex". Well, plenty of folks would say I never really grew up , but now I have an Alex.

[Schlitzz]

I had the three valve tenor horn, by Besson. Then I had a Yamaha YEP-321. Probably need to buy one again, swap out for large shank leadpipe.

[Willys]

I was one of two trombone players selected in 7th grade to switch to tuba. Looking back, I believe our being selected was primarily due to our size. Anyway, the very first horn was a fiberglass tuba of some sort that had an absolutely vile taste after just a few minutes of playing it. Shortly thereafter, I was assigned a Conn 20j. It was a great instrument but quite a handful for a 7th grader.

Subsequent years led to a Buescher sousa which was a joy to play. I was promoted from the 20j to a YBB321. BUT, the school had a 24j that I absolutely loved to play.

Thinking about it now, both my section mate and I hold a few inches and several pounds on the trombone players in our community band as well.