my own comparison of the new-style King 2341 to the Eastman knock-off

[DonO.]

It is odd indeed that used examples of the King 2341 go for in the $3000’s and Eastman copy goes for in the $5000’s- when they start out new just the opposite- King going for $10,000 plus and Eastman in the $8,000’s. I think it’s because Eastman has become the newest”wunderkind” through an aggressively mounted advertising campaign combined with a plethora of professional/college “endorsers” and “artists” (compensated?). This has resulted in Eastman becoming the “it” horn, and therefore it naturally follows that there is a perception that Eastmans “hold their value”. The two horns should by rights depreciate equally, but biased perceptions in the marketplace skews the perceived value.

I suppose I will be ticking off all of the Eastman fans here, who will all say I have no idea what I’m talking about.?I’m sure Eastman makes some very fine horns. I myself have been tempted by their 3/4 size 4 piston BBb. But from where I sit, it’s hard to deny that at least part of the company’s success can be attributed to smart marketing.

I have never had any problems associated with the perceived “weaknesses” of the King. I actually think the detachable lead pipe and valve section is a good thing. I do have to keep the right size Allen wrench in my kit in case the bolts loosen up, as happens occasionally. Vented valves? Never saw the need. The only things I would change about my King is 1. More water keys 2. Stainless steel valves.

[hrender]

Well you have to remember that the king has been around for 25 years or more. (I played a prototype in 1999) and until recently, the Eastman was just an OK copy. There are more older beat up kings out there (although I don't see any for $3000, and I've never seen a used Eastman for sale). The valves are so much better than they used to be, and when I played one at the DC conference, I was blown away. Played the same model a week later at TMEA and was so in love with it that Eastman offered to ship one to my house for further evaluation with no obligation to buy.

The problem with the kings are the terrible QC and the floating leadpipe deforms the 1st valve casing. I've been seeing the kings in public schools ever since they were new. The early ones were good horns, but every batch got worse and worse, and the Eastmans came out of nowhere to suddenly be an amazing tuba. Literally one of the best I've ever played. I chose it over a miraphone hagen 494 when I could have bought either one

[DonO.]

Well you have to remember that the king has been around for 25 years or more. (I played a prototype in 1999) and until recently, the Eastman was just an OK copy. There are more older beat up kings out there (although I don't see any for $3000, and I've never seen a used Eastman for sale). The valves are so much better than they used to be, and when I played one at the DC conference, I was blown away. Played the same model a week later at TMEA and was so in love with it that Eastman offered to ship one to my house for further evaluation with no obligation to buy.

The problem with the kings are the terrible QC and the floating leadpipe deforms the 1st valve casing. I've been seeing the kings in public schools ever since they were new. The early ones were good horns, but every batch got worse and worse, and the Eastmans came out of nowhere to suddenly be an amazing tuba. Literally one of the best I've ever played. I chose it over a miraphone hagen 494 when I could have bought either one

I don’t think the floating leadpipe should be a problem for the first valve casing as long as the thumb screw that hold the brace to the bell remains tight. It does work loose, and can even drop out if one isn’t vigilant. There is a big difference between this horn in the hands of a competent adult who takes care of his stuff, and the young scholars who regularly abuse things they didn’t pay for. I’m willing to bet that this is what happens with the young scholars: screw gets loose, screw drops out, screw is lost, scholar continues to play with leadpipe moving around every which way, side to side movement causes valve casing to distort.

[LeMark]

as someone who has spent thousands of hours around these things in public schools, I can tell you the 1st valve still sticks even if the thumb screw is tight.

It's a bad design, and the kings were better when the leadpipe and valve section was soldered into place. (early 2000's models)

[bloke]

Inarguably, the detachable bell 2341 was the best of any of these, particularly when it was first altered from the 1241, and King workmanship was still at or near its peak.

I realize that most people don't have experience or tools but I would much rather soup up a new style 2341's valve section than an Eastman, because the final product (intonation and resonance) would be better... and both of them would need souping up if I was to use one of them as a personal instrument. Also, I can make a first valve not stick, and even with closer tolerances.
Yes, the detachable mouth pipe is stupid, and detachable stuff (King, Yamaha, Jupiter, and others) is a buffing and lacquering work around, rather than for anyone's convenience beyond the factory's. My model 98 Miraphone has at least five detaching points for the mouth pipe and the final connection is a slide - instead of a pressure coupler, which is probably why my first rotor doesn't stick, but ConnSelmer would be paying more money for that.
Further, it's a dumb design to have a pressure coupler right next to a valve casing, because that's putting differing amounts of tension (depending on how much a particular installer cranks on it) on one of the ports of a valve casing. If they want the mouth pipe to disconnect, they should have it unplug a couple of inches away from there... and then heat the solder joints of the ferrule right next to the valve casing (one last time) after it's installed.
In my repair experience, a whole bunch of school tubas' (all sorts of models) first valves stick because students spit hard scale into them straight from the mouthpipe tubes. I had to mess with this Eastman tuba's first valve (actually that one in addition to all of the others) but wasn't thinking anything about it because it's such a routine thing to have to mess with a whole bunch of school tubas' valves due to hard scale, as well as having to mess with a large percentage of four valve tubas' fourth valves - due to lack of use.

This is redundant, but my Holton (York made bell and bows) tuba - which, as shown, is slightly smaller than a new style 2341 - features a highly adulterated 1990s 2341 (from a two piece tuba) valve section. I wasn't really satisfied with the fit of the pistons to the casings (not up to European standards, but as good as Eastman), so (again) I bartered for a set of the Martin Wilk Meinlschmidt pistons - which were barely too large - and fit those into the casings. Now, this instrument has valves better than either King or Eastman with closer tolerances than either and (since I oil it every time I play it, preventing hard scale buildup) they don't stick.

If the factory that JP uses would build a knockoff of my - or one of Yorkboy's - 32 inch tall / 19 inch bell BB-flat tubas, I would wager that they would attract the attention of actual working tuba players, and not just school systems looking for something that costs less than King... But their attention has been directed towards acquiring a couple of western hemisphere instrument makers, and not so much towards expanding their tuba line, other than some recently-added decent 621 knockoffs.

[DonO.]

I just checked current prices at Dillon music.

Eastman EBB 534 is $9,211.
King 2341 is $10,139.

Price difference is $928. NOT “thousands”.

[PlayTheTuba]

At the present they are much closer in price.

Although, when the King and Eastman had a larger price gap in the past, the King was more affordable too, technically.

[LeMark]

I had student but one for 6k brand new a few months ago. I hadn't seen a 9k price yet.

I fail to see how the king is going for over 10k because it's not subject to tarrifs.... Yet

[bloke]

I wonder if there exists a person who paid $10,000 for a new King.

Again, I'm in the $3000 for "shiny used including case with a few dents" market.

I never buy any recent vintage USA made sousaphones to flip, because their outer bows are paper thin, and local schools that I would sell them to would expect me to take out all those dents every year. (Also, thin sheet brass looks ugly once it's been repaired. It's all dimply, and - after 7 or 8 years of this - repeatedly-repaired thin sheet metal often cracks.) For the same reason (now that I've experienced that Eastman bottom bows are roughly the same thickness as those sousaphones) I wouldn't pick up any of those to sell to schools either. Additionally, I never see used Eastman tubas for prices as low as used new style King, so no room for any sort of profit.
Again, due to superior 5th partial intonation, a King is worth souping up for professional use, even though the valve section build quality from the factory is lower (I can align slides, and - redundantly speaking - aftermarket Martin Wilk valves - which are slightly oversized - will bring the valves up to professional standards in the process of fitting them into King casings), but the century old York instruments with 19 inch bells (still in good condition when found) which are slightly smaller are much more worth souping up then either the King or the Chinese knockoff. I (now that I finally encountered one) personally judge Eastman as challenging for school use, primarily due to the thickness of the bottom bow. This one featured some whopper dents after about a year or so of use, they were way too easy to remove, and the thin sheet metal defined a very grainy appearance - with the interior surface texture transferring to the outside.

BOTH the King and the China knockoff would benefit from thicker sheet metal bells and reducing the bell diameter to 19 inches. I guess we'll have to see what the new Chinese Kings are like, once they are produced over there.

I'm impressed with the build quality of the Chinese JP valve sections and the thickness of the material of the outer bows, but their only four valve front action piston tubas are a couple of somewhat redundant models which are similar to Yamaha 621. Truth be told, I like JP's compact rotary better than I like the compact (new style) piston King. The fit of the stop arms to the rotor stems is a little bit sloppy with JP, and rely a little too much on the tightness of the center screw (much like Miraphone's stop arms, back during the DVS linkage era). I'm looking forward to JP's factory stepping up to laser cutting those holes in the stop arms, but other then this minor detail I REALLY like their compact 4/4 model JP379B...but - as such an overwhelming percentage of schools' tubas suffer from being knocked over all the time - I'm not sure that rotary tubas are a good idea for any public school, and top action piston tubas aren't a good idea either for the same reason, as top action piston tubas' vertically oriented slides end up being folded inward, and ruin the valve casings when top action piston tubas are knocked over.
=========================
Again, someone needs to reproduce the 32-in tall 19 inch bell York 33 design with a Kng front action piston valve section on it, and with substantial thickness sheet metal used on all of the outer bows and the bell...
... superior resonance, equal-to-King intonation characteristics, reasonable dent resistant characteristics, 19 inch bell less prone to circular creasing vs. 22-in., lower 32-in profile less prone to being knocked over in school situations, more useful to professional players, certainly with an aftermarket or optional fifth rotor, whereby I would recommend an FF semitone (half step) length circuit, to perfect (via 5-4) B natural and low E (pulling the upper #4 slide for 5-2-4 low E flat).
Otherwise, the TALLER York 4/4 with a .750" bore (later copied by B/M Symphonic in Germany decades ago, with the German copy marketed as "York Master") was an amazing front-action piston instrument.
Yes. What I'm suggesting is that products designed and built by York in this size range and style were better than King, so why not copy the York short-4/4-and-17.5mm bore or tall-4/4-and-19mm-bore York instruments, rather than copying King?...and with practical-thickness sheet metal.

[the elephant]

Oh, how I miss Olds Ambassadors in middle school band rooms…

[bloke]

Oh, how I miss Olds Ambassadors in middle school band rooms…

As you saw in the repair forum, as torn up as that Conn (Olds O-99 stencil: 11J) is, I'm still going to be able to get it all straightened out and working again.

This whole thing with the grunty little "sub-tubas" (various makes' knockoffs of Yamaha model 105) is tied in with riding school buses. Rural has obviously always been different, but - back when all urban and most suburban children walked to and from school (and it was safe to do so) - the band rooms were open in the morning way before school (by the custodians, long before the band directors arrived at school), kids could walk to school early and practice, and there was always band practice after school- whereby the band kids just walked home an hour later than everybody else.

Today, school systems and subcontracted school bus companies don't even allow the tiny little grunt-tubas on the buses.

As far as practicing at home is concerned, it seems to me the high school kids could keep the concert tubas at home in the fall and practice on them, and could keep the sousaphones at home in the winter and practice on them at home.

...Of course, all we had...

- back when sales tax was only two or three cents on the dollar, property tax was a much lower percentage of assessed value, school teaching was considered a 2/3-time job (in regards to pay), since it only involved 190 days for most of the regular classroom teachers, and (without all of these week-long breaks throughout the year) the school year began and ended after and before air conditioning was needed, so schools utility bills were much lower -

...was a set of fiberglass sousaphones that was shared between junior and junior high. Since our low income neighborhood high school consistently seemed to produce the principal players in the all-state band for some weird reason (the real and simple reason being that we didn't want to be shown up by those who came before us), when I was in the 12th grade they tossed us one of those tiny little Miraphone "Standard" (one of the first "grunt", along with Meinl-Weston model 10) tubas, as well as a (brand new model, that year) Reynolds TB-10 (Olds O-99 in disguise) which came packed in two pieces of form-fitting styrofoam which fitted around it. Even with really really leaky valves (which had been ruined by the board of education's repair shop), the two-piece upright bell King 1240 that we had sounded better, and - truth be told - the 36K fiberglass sousaphones sounded best of all. As far as those two pieces of styrofoam in which those Reynolds and Olds tubas were shipped (anyone else remember those?) is concerned, some schools had fathers of band students who would use those two pieces of styrofoam and would aluminum weld a frame to fit around them...and/or boards of education had shops that could fabricate those (back when more Americans were involved in the trades, instead of sitting at computers all day) so it could be used as a case for a few years... just as my mother and I Bondo-ed around the cardboard box that my $39 Kingston pawn shop bass guitar came in, so I would have a case to carry it.

Per typical, I've strayed off topic - I guess - with lots of memories, but I continue to make the point that sousaphones (and King sousaphones - just as with the tubas - play better In tune than Conn - and sousaphone's in general - basically being 5/4 size tubas, and whereas only a limited percentage of high school students ever use the fourth valve on their government supplied four valve tubas anyway) make wonderful concert band instruments...and - though the bells faced up - J.P. Sousa apparently thought so as well, and his band played quite a few indoor concerts, according to what I've read.

Maybe it's time to quit going crazy, and maybe spend a maximum of $20,000 a year on developing halftime shows (vs. - often - a quarter of a million dollars) and be more realistic about the quality and complexity of instruments that school children really need to use in their school bands. ... and maybe even compact the 180 day school year back to between Monday after Labor Day to the day before Memorial Day - so as to use less air conditioning, and morph schools back into teaching useful knowledge (as well as with a great emphasis on the trades) and encouraging independent thought and reasoning powers, rather than babysitting and purveying nonsense.

back on topic...sort of...
As formidable a regional reputation as my particular high school band's tuba section had playing our Conn 36K fiberglass sousaphones, we would have sounded better with King fiberglass or brass sousaphones and would have put out more sound than with these new style King 2341 tubas or the Chinese knockoff of those, but - had we had either configuration of the York 4/4 size tubas in good condition (short medium large bore or tall large bore) - we would have been in 7th heaven.

[DonO.]

I had student but one for 6k brand new a few months ago. I hadn't seen a 9k price yet.

I fail to see how the king is going for over 10k because it's not subject to tarrifs.... Yet

I was simply going by the advertised prices of a major retailer in the tuba world (Dillon). This is what they are charging for the two horns in question.

If I were buying a brand new tuba right now, as much as I like my King, I would not pay $10,000 for it. I didn’t pay anywhere close to that just 5 years ago. At the $10,000 price point there are obviously lots of choices that some would say are better choices than the King.

[bloke]

I know I've shown a similar picture before, but these houses are nearly directly across the street ("resume speed") from my high school, and are there to this day. They may look like it, but they are not public housing. They're just housing. Probably 800 ft, a small bath, a small kitchen, two small bedrooms and gravel driveways.
We did not consider ourselves poor. We thought we were doing just fine.
We didn't tear up instruments. We wore them out...but not even that really; we just wore the finishes off them at contact points. It was a different time.
I switched to tuba halfway through beginner band because I found out that it cost $200 to buy a used Bundy trumpet (who knows how many payments...??) with a green plastic case from the music store (and even from a pawn shop they were probably $60... Run an online inflation calculator from 1969 to 2026 - or easier, just multiply everything X 10), and there was no way I was going to try to face my Dad and ask him to pay for either of those.



Things like televisions, band instruments, and a lot of other things just cost a lot more at that time. Think about the used music store Bundy trumpet costing the 2026 equivalent of $2000, yet you can buy a pretty good knockoff of a King 2341 sometimes (even maybe at a music store) for only about $4,500 (used) and sometimes a real King used (from an individual) for only about 3,000.

[gocsick]

Things like televisions, band instruments, and a lot of other things just cost a lot more at that time. Think about the used music store Bundy trumpet costing the 2026 equivalent of $2000

Adjusted for inflation's today's prices are actually pretty much in line. Yamaha YTR-2330 made in China student trumpet $1800 from Sweetwater and similar price from Music and Arts

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... ld-lacquer

Olds trumpet prices from 1962

Ambassador – $154
Special – $189
Studio – $225
Super – $260
Recording – $310
Opera – $345
Mendez – $360

$10.70 in today's money* for $1.00 in 1962 .. means an Olds Ambassador world cost about $1,648 today. The professional models scale equivalently as well.


*As bloke will no doubt point out that the "on paper" value of our money has little to do with how much it hurts to go to the store

[bloke]

I sort of view the Yamaha pricing of their beginner stuff (even school bid pricing) as... (well...I don't want to get sued for libel) .

M.A.P. on this Chinese trumpet (every bit as good, in spite of my obvious bias - being a dealer) is $432.
https://jpmusicalinstruments.com/produc ... bb-trumpet
("Some" dealers sell them for less, as long as they don't "advertise" them.)

...and a very nice beginner trombone in the same price range:
https://jpmusicalinstruments.com/produc ... r-trombone
excellent fit/finish, valve (stainless steel) tolerances, remarkably well-aligned #1 and #3 slides...

I believe the Yamaha 225 clarinet is made in Indonesia, and - yet - lists for $1395. Is that correct?

ie. (Though American list pricing is probably in the same range, suddenly - according to reports - they no longer are going to be made, and some m̶a̶n̶u̶f̶a̶c̶t̶u̶r̶e̶r̶s̶ ___brands - which don't necessarily make the best stuff - seem to believe that their $h!t doesn't stink, and they seem to have managed to convince many people that it doesn't. )

bloke "Yamaha: just another Asian manufacturer, yet with German/Dutch/French pricing."

[LeMark]

Just for the record. This is a 832 with both a euro mouthpiece and an American

[bloke]

That's the type of comparison that everyone shows, because they don't have the technology to photograph the interior, where things matter.
Let's say that the Bach style mouthpiece (known for having about the shortest shank of any style) still seats about 1/8 inch back from the choke point and only exposes a small amount of reverse taper receiver... and then, how much more reverse taper receiver is the Euro shank mouthpiece exposing...??

The point is not that one is doing better or the other is doing worse (based on pictures of exteriors).
The point is that we don't know (certainly not based on pictures of exteriors), because we can't see what's going on inside from just taking an external picture - whereby we might like the way the external looks to us one way versus the other. ...but that's just looks and it's not bore taper.

I personally seem to generally prefer setbacks from the choke point (for the receiver ends and the mouth pipe tube begins.. the smallest point of the venturi) that are not particularly far versus those that are set back considerably far... but someone else might prefer the other.

As long as the ends of mouthpieces don't extend into the actual mouth pipes, things seem to work pretty well.

[LeMark]

My student has a Bach 7 that won't even seat completely in the receiver

[bloke]

My student has a Bach 7 that won't even seat completely in the receiver

That doesn't prove that the receiver isn't standard shank with an extension to cosmetically accommodate Euro shank.
Rather, that just reinforces my point that Bach tuba mouthpiece shanks are very short and bottom out because they have ring that happens so soon compared to other makes of mouth pieces' longer shanks (regardless of the size of the shank).

I don't know if I can explain it any more clearly...
Perhaps someone else can.

The first mouthpiece I would test with most any tuba would be a standard shank mouthpiece. I'm not a fan of Bach mouthpieces these days, but I used to play a 7 a long time ago. If I tested a tuba with a 7 and the receiver hit on that ring, I would simply go get some other standard shank mouthpiece with a longer shank to test the instrument. With these fake Euro style receivers on so many of the Chinese instruments, Bach may (??) need to rethink their outer design.

Again, I believe attention is drawn to the exterior appearance (and in this case, the restrictions of the short Bach style shank) and not to the interior fit... but I can't seem to get this point across.

[bloke]

I could draw a diagram, but I've done this before and I'm tired of drawing diagrams.