Posted by Klaus on October 03, 2002 at 10:29:08:
One topic that comes up from time to time is about the transitions/glidings/alterations in the low brass models coming out of the Boosey & Hawkes/Besson house, that produces/produced its upper level models under labels like New Standard, Imperial, and Sovereign.
When I went through my pile of catalogues, I found a leaflet displaying New Standard brasses. When I looked at the pics, my first reaction was: This leaflet is from the 60-ies! (I did not look at the receivers of the euphs).
One problem with sales material out of B&H/Besson is, that one rarely finds a date. At
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/YorkMasterPublicPhotos/files/
page I have offered some .pdf files out of a Boosey and Hawkes catalogue, which I based on my memory date to 1978.
Here enters my interest for the New Standard leaflet. It is dated July 1977. And none of the tubas presented have 19" bells.
That tells me, that the dating of the above mentioned B&H catalogue could not be much earlier, if at all, than 1978. On the other hand there is my memory of visiting a huge combined exhibition of Brit B&H/Besson retailer in a hall next to the Royal Albert Hall of London. It was arranged in connection with the European Championships for brass bands, where I took part in October of 1978. My memory tells that 19" tuba bells clearly were there back then. So I will, now a bit more safely, stand by my 1978 dating of that catalogue.
As for the New Standard leaflet it can be found as a .pdf scan file at the site linked to below. My previous two Yahoo groups already have their file areas filled up, so this file is placed in a third group. As usually open and non-posting.
I can see from the membership lists of the two first groups, that people go pretty exactly for the catalogue information, that they need for their specific purposes. This exactly reflects my intentions of making information available for the dedicated community of this board.
We often are asked to help determining and document different older instruments. My .pdf files only cover a small part of that huge field. But I hope they will be received in that spirit. Despite, or because, my way of making rather high resolution scans, that generate huge files. (And during my tests of each file I have learned, that when the files first have loaded, then they are saved to disk as fast as the disk will take them).
Klaus