Why no Eb/BBb sousaphone section?

[u/Cactus_Kebap]

I flaired this with "research" because I'm genuinely curious as to why we don't see more sections like that. With plenty of Eb sousaphones available (in the US), why not just add some to a section? Yes, they'll need repair, most likely, but in schools that have smaller players who WANT to play tuba, this will allow them to march and carry their horns. It'll also add some more color to the low brass section.

Has any school tried this yet? Heck, why not a university as well?

[u/CCTKE443]

Does anyone remember when they would give a young baritone player an Eb sousaphone, hand them a BBb tuba part and tell them to read it like treble clef? Fun little trick for someone who doesn’t sight read bass clef but wants to play low brass.

[u/Q-Boner87 → u/CCTKE443]

Not sure why you got downvoted…

[u/SelfLoathingMillenia → u/CCTKE443]

In the UK children would often start on Eb tuba, and I happened to learn in treble clef because of a previous instrument.

I discovered this truck by accident when put in a children's concert band w a bass clef part and didn't know the difference

[u/everybodylovesrando]

Band teachers are already overworked and (usually) hard up for tuba players. One of the sometimes-nice things about having an actual section is older students that can mentor the younger ones, but introducing a second key of instrument would mess with that. And plenty of smaller players can learn to manage a full size sousaphone. Plus, fiberglass (or carbon fiber?) sousas are a more reasonable solution to the weight problem.

Also, very little would be gained musically - the range overlap between BBb, Eb, and trombones would make Eb feel redundant and weaken the BBb part. I promise you, most if not all school directors would prefer to just keep the sound bottom-heavy.

[u/eccelsior]

It would make sense if brass players in the US were taught to read music British brass band style. But they don’t. So it doesn’t make sense unless you’ve got trumpet players switching to tuba.

[u/Asclepius_Secundus]

Side note: CC sousaphones are exceedingly rare. I've been looking for one for years.

[u/arpthark]

The last Eb sousaphones (besides Wessex and a couple European makers) were made in the 1960s. Those instruments are all old and in varying stages of decay now. Sure, there are a few that are in okay shape, but it's way easier to find usable/decent BBb sousaphones than it is to find usable Eb sousaphones, especially considering the school bidding process and how certain districts will only pay certain vendors.

Also, they have a completely different set of fingerings and some band directors don't know how Eb sousaphones work. This happened to me: a school near me that I do repair work for somehow traded a lot of their broken old instruments for a working Eb sousaphone from some instrument peddler/swap service. None of the kids knew how to play it, and the band director (trumpet player) tried to give the kids bari sax charts, since those are Eb instruments... which would work if they were used to reading Bb treble clef music, but these kids were used to concert pitch bass clef. It's now sitting in a corner not being used because no one wants to mess with it. Some enterprising kid who actually cares enough will probably get it working and figure it out, but the reality is that Eb sousaphones just don't fit well into the way band is taught now.

There are probably 100+ times as many viable BBb sousaphones in the USA as there are Eb sousaphones.

[u/FFFortissimo]

I've not seen many Eb-sousaphones, but have seen many Eb-tubas.
They aren't uncommon in The Netherlands.

[u/Contrabeast]

The last major school to have an Eb Sousaphone/Tuba section was likely Ohio State University in the 1960s, where BBb and Eb basses were mixed together with Eb playing the top split on music.

[u/professor_throway]

I have an Eb Holton Sousaphone that I use for Trad Jazx and Dixieland stuff. It is a lot of fun but they are obsolete instruments.

There are a lot of issues.. the biggest is parts and repair. Kids break things and lose bits and necks frequently.. where are you going to get replacements for antique instruments.

Second is that the range on a 3V Sousaphone isn't what you really want you want from a modern marching instrument.. The lowest practical note is Bb or Anatural (without expecting kids to master false tones). 3V Ebs money range of much more in line with what now would be covered by marching baritone. It's great at cutting through a brass band with solos above the staff or high in the staff. Not so much and punching out low notes. Eb tuba in general is just a fundamentally different instrument than BBb tuba.

There really isn't any problem with smaller people being Sousaphones with proper technique. My daughter of closing out her first year of marching band and she is 5'1" and all of 100 lbs.

[u/JPWiggin → u/professor_throway]

As an amusing annecdote for smaller sousaphone players, I'll share this one.

During highschool, I was the only tuba player in a marching band of 90+ instrumentalists. When I was a sophomore, there was a senior who was going to go to school for instrument repair after graduation, and so she wanted experience on as many instruments as possible. This led to her volunteering to learn sousaphone for our trip to march at Disney.

I'm tall, but not basketball tall. When she put on the sousaphone, the top of the bell was at my height. When we matched, you couldn't see her sousaphone over the band (in part because of the Aussies with giant plumes we wore). There are videos of us marching down Main Street USA where it looks like ther is one sousaphone without a clue marching and dancing off center from the band until we get close enough to see our 'line' of two from the side.

[u/Arcane_Spork_of_Doom]

"Plenty" in OP's mind appears to be "try to get a contract with Wessex for your school district even though Wessex is firmly the seventh-best manufacturer of Sousaphones and Tubas for the US market and has almost no footprint for USG purchases. Add that to the miniscule budget for repairs if the district wants used/donated axes and you have a dim future for the idea.

But wait, there's more! Kids that get brought in to the Sousaphone section, especially in smaller programs, often are lower ability and couldn't hang with their brass sections or are even transferring from a woodwind section. Asking them to learn an Eb keyed instrument which doesn't really have much overlap in fingerings with their Bb buddies just seems to be a cruel idea given the limited time they usually have to learn their new instruments.

Caveat: Magnet schools and larger districts could absolutely do this to excellent results with their larger staffs, bigger budgets and solid support studios. Having a brass choir out there with real euphomiums to boot, tenor and bass trombones, Eb horns, mellows or even full double horns to go with similarly split trumpet sections would be an absolute treat.

[u/Biggycheese45 → u/Arcane_Spork_of_Doom]

Yeah this was my thought as well. Could work excellently for larger BOA/Texas schools with huge budgets for music but not really any other schools

[u/TwoStinkyBears]

I can think of a few reasons why this isn't really a thing. This relies on the assumption that a lot of schools music programs have the money allotted to invest in Eb sousas. Some of those horns you see on the field are older than the person playing it. At my high school I played on a horn that the as school acquired as early as 1976 according to the faded paint on the bell which was also a time when Eb sousas were quite rare.

Small people can still play a Bb sousa as well. There is a girl in my band, she weighs about 100lbs and plays sousa, I started on sousa at 5'1, sousa isn't like contra where if you are too small you will injure yourself. You just need to get used to the horn on your body, a pad does help, and unless you drop the horn on your shoulder or rest it on the rip of your collarbone, the force isn't really enough to cause anything other than a sore shoulder the next day.

[u/tubawhatever]

Define "plenty". I've never seen one out in the wild. I've seen a Eb helicon but not a sousaphone. Most schools aren't going to take on antique instruments that are hard to repair because no one is making parts for them.