Posted by Art H on February 24, 2004 at 00:03:21:
In Reply to: Where are the "Tuba Graveyards?" posted by Roboslack on February 23, 2004 at 23:06:20:
I found one 30 years ago in Somerville, MA. There were junk tubas and saxhorns going back to the Civil War, all coated in dust. I asked the old guy who owned the business about helicons and he said he used to convert them to sousaphones back in the 30's. When I looked him up a couple of years later I learned that the place had burned to the ground and all the instruments got buried in the rubble. But they had a new store, and the old guy was happily buying up old sousaphones from schools that were getting the new fiberglass models; he had a basement full of them. His son, taking over the business, was pretty disgusted with the situation and was happy to unload what I could carry out of there.
Then I heard about a similar place in Baltimore. Eventually I managed to get there and was told that they had just sold the whole basement full of junk to some outfit in eastern Europe.
There were also shops in London, Amsterdam and Zurich that would qualify as tuba graveyards back in 1965. But now that we have Ebay I think they are a thing of the past.