The Early Conn ‘Famous Artist’ era tuba mouthpieces

[bisontuba]

Hi-
I thought I would share the famous artist era C.G. Conn tuba mouthpieces from the archives.

Old Conn mthpces...H, Chief, Geib, Special, Sm Helleberg, Large Helleberg
The line up of the 6 is in that order for pics #1-4...










The small & large Helleberg (lg in gold)



A Conn Chief mouthpiece that actually belonged to John Kuhn!



The very rare Conn Special..a very wide mouthpiece.



An early Conn Geib mouthpiece, named for Fred Fritz Geib.



A Conn H Helleberg, named for August Gus Helleberg.



A Conn Giant Eb tuba mouthpiece, also known as a Conn Monster.



A Conn S Eb tuba mouthpiece, also known as a Conn Standard or Ltd mthpce.



From a 1913 Conn Catalog, courtesy of the Sax Museum.



From a 1923-4 Conn Bass catalog with John Kuhn on the cover.



From a 1935 Conn catalog, courtesy of the Sax Museum.



This era of mouthpiece from Conn was generally from 1913 through 1935. Some interesting tuba history…

Enjoy.
Mark

[bort2.0]

I wish I could see your photos without having to click on the links

[York-aholic]

I wish I could see your photos without having to click on the links

Weird. I see them just fine (just using an old iPad).

Very cool, especially the chief owned by Kuhn. Thank goodness out for sharing your pictures.

[bisontuba]

I wish I could see your photos without having to click on the links

On an IPad/Mac, all is fine ..

[donn]

I don't seem to have the knack for seeing them at legible resolution, on a Mac laptop, but was able to dig up the same 1935 mouthpiece page from elsewhere. Interesting bits:

• The Chief is presented in cross section at the top right. For me, this puts to rest speculation I've seen that the Conn 1 is a Conn Chief with the Precision taper exterior. Nope. The Chief looks like a relatively ordinary mouthpiece from here; the Conn 1 bottomless funnel is apparently the first and last of its kind.
• Giant Eb Bass: "Wide cup diameter, deep bowl and wide rim, or use on large Eb basses and for musicians having large lips." I have one. It's somewhat similar to a Conn 3, ca. 30mm, today would be considered a bass trombone mouthpiece. So what they said in 1935 has to be interpreted with an inflation factor.
• Bakelite mouthpieces: "Designed for use by musicians with tender lips."

[bloke]

We're assuming that those cutaways are accurate pictures.

With all sorts of copying having gone on forever by competitors, I'm not sure that we can depend on those commercial artists' drawings to be accurate representations (and I would more assume that they would be intentionally inaccurate...thought sort-of/generally like the actual products).

Further, cups with straight funnels don't make for very interesting cutaway pictures.

[cjk]

I don't seem to have the knack for seeing them at legible resolution, on a Mac laptop, but was able to dig up the same 1935 mouthpiece page from elsewhere. Interesting bits:

• The Chief is presented in cross section at the top right. For me, this puts to rest speculation I've seen that the Conn 1 is a Conn Chief with the Precision taper exterior. Nope. The Chief looks like a relatively ordinary mouthpiece from here; the Conn 1 bottomless funnel is apparently the first and last of its kind.
• Giant Eb Bass: "Wide cup diameter, deep bowl and wide rim, or use on large Eb basses and for musicians having large lips." I have one. It's somewhat similar to a Conn 3, ca. 30mm, today would be considered a bass trombone mouthpiece. So what they said in 1935 has to be interpreted with an inflation factor.
• Bakelite mouthpieces: "Designed for use by musicians with tender lips."

Based on my personal observations and me measuring stuff with my calipers, I can confirm that the Conn 1 and Conn Chief cups were identical.

[donn]

It would be interesting to know how that happens -- Conn goes to the trouble to print a cross section rendering, that doesn't actually resemble the mouthpiece? There must be more to this story. There's no point in intentionally obscuring the internal shape - if they didn't want that known, they didn't have to publish the renderings in the first place.

[bloke]

Again, an approximation shows potential customers roughly what the mouthpieces look like inside, without giving so much information that the mouthpieces can be easily copied from pictures - just as Holton ended up copying the inside dimensions of the 1.

[donn]

Someone contemplating the purchase of a tuba mouthpiece may fall into three categories on this matter

• has some preconceived idea what the interior of a tuba mouthpiece would look like. In this case, the diagram serves to illustrate the distinctive attributes of the represented mouthpiece. Except this one apparently doesn't, at all. It's a tuba mouthpiece, but some other tuba mouthpiece altogether, according to you and cjk.
• has no preconceived idea what the interior of a tuba mouthpiece would look like. In this case, there's little to be gained by showing such buyers a group of general tuba mouthpiece interiors, the information being of no use to them.
• only intends to duplicate the critical dimensions and sell an identical mouthpiece under their own label. Anyone with a serious interest in doing that, would purchase an example and copy that. The critical bore and throat dimensions aren't going to come off the diagram with the needed precision.

Either this catalogue was just remarkably sloppy work, or there really was a Chief that looked like that.

[bloke]

~or~

3/ Conn chose to not completely reveal it's design and dimensions via eschewing completely correct drawings.


> It's really easy to appear to be "right", when distinct possibilities (deliberately dismissed) are ignored, isn't it?






https://tinyurl.com/yepItsmeagain

[donn]

... or there really was a Chief that looked like that.

More on this explanation, from a thread here "What can you tell me about the Chief mouthpiece?" Various respondents describing their experiences with Chief mouthpieces - that seem distinctly different.

I have an pristine original Conn Chief. The throat is very wide. It has an American shank. Interior rim diameter is about 32.6 mm. The rim is quite wide.

There's a picture of this mouthpiece - engraved "CONN-CHIEF" with a "77" under that.

The Simonetti Chief is just "CHIEF" in larger letters, with "9" on the other side, and if it isn't just an artifact of the photo, it looks longer. Simonetti bills this as a "Chief 9" mouthpiece.

When I was play testing the Wessex 3/4 BBb, they sent a Chief with it. I liked the mouthpiece and am surprised that it is considered huge, because I have trouble with something like a Jim Self, whose throat is too big and which is too funnel shaped. Maybe the chief is a bit cup shaped?

That having been said, the Conn Chief mouthpieces are VERY large on my face.

My memories are that it and it's larger throat made it feel like it took more air than i had to sustain top notch sound.

The Conn 1 I think is what i was comparing it to, which was just at the right amount for me, and for some instruments, was just the right mouthpiece to get a full sound out of them.

And I subscribe to the last comment - my Conn 1 is an easy mouthpiece to play, not made for a giant or exceptional player at all, it's very similar to a Schilke 67 except for the depth. In fact I'm going back to my Marcinkiewicz H1 for a show Sunday, because I feel like I'm not getting enough into the Conn 1 for outdoors. Either I stack up better than I would have guessed against Kuhn, or this really is not his mouthpiece, which I think is a far more likely explanation.

[bloke]

Are you still selling those Conn 1 knock offs?

[donn]

No, there were only four of those; I have one of them, the others are long gone. That's actually what I'm referring to as the Conn 1 I'm playing - it's really a James New C-1 - but of course it's the same as my real Conn Precision 1, just shinier. Indoors, it's the best; outdoors I can't hear myself as well, so I don't appreciate it as much.

[bisontuba]

A new addition:











Antique Conn Visible Embouchure JI-402 (JI-202) Helleberg Bass (Famous Artists Era) Mouthpiece Red Bakelite with its Shipping/Storage Canister/Can made by the Makers Improved Mailing Case Company of New York. Nice original mailing label from the C. G. Conn company of Elkhart, Indiana to the Bakelite Corporation of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Inside the can is a crumpled Bakelite Corp Factory Memo that was used as packaging material.

BTW., here is the Edward Gulick/Conn patent for the bakelite mouthpieces:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US1740013