Posted by Leland on June 30, 1999 at 16:03:29:
In Reply to: SOUSAPHONES, SOUSAPHONES, SOUSAPHONES!!! posted by Dave Ti Brown on June 29, 1999 at 20:20:30:
My pick is King. The mid-50's-vintage one I've been using at school is big overall, but has a small valveset bore and a huge bell flare. Fairly light, efficient response, tremendous aural presence on the field, and it'll play as loud as you're willing to go.
If the one being built by UMI is anything like mine, that's what I'd get. I'm tempted to buy the one that the school has before I graduate!
When we tested & rated all the tubas at our school -- four different sousaphones, four different uprights, and one King contra bugle -- for outdoors playing, the King sousie was the best of our sousaphones, and the Pan Am was by FAR the worst of anything we had. An Olds Cleveland sousie ranked right behind the King. Of course, we didn't have a 20K at the time, but since one showed up at the local music store, we may trade our two Pan Ams for it, and we'll re-test then. I'm interested to see how the King and 20K stack up. The pre-test odds favor the King, because I've never felt that the 20K's resulting sound never matches the effort put in, and one of our players who used a 20K all through high school still likes the King better.
If anybody would like to see that test (same thing that I posted to Tubaeuph a month or so ago), I still have copies in my email stuff that I could forward. It's unpublished and not recognized by the TUBA Journal or anything, but we had a free afternoon, and we had some fun. :-)
Seeya,
Leland