Tuba after American bandmaster John Philip Sousa, resembles a hélicon with the bell pointed up (in the original models as the J. W. Pepper prototype and Sousa's concert instruments) and then curved to point forward (as developed by Conn and others). Some ancestors of the tuba, such as the military "bombardon", had unusual valve and bore arrangements compared to modern tubas. During the American Civil War, most brass bands used a branch of the brass family known as "saxhorns", which, by today's standards, have a narrower bore taper than tuba—the same as true cornets and baritones, but distinct from trumpets, euphoniums,
Subcontrabass tuba Subcontrabass tuba The subcontrabass tuba is an extension of the tuba family within the modern contrabass tuba. At least five known examples have been created, all pitched in BBBb, sounding a full octave lower than standard BBb contrabass tubas. Music for them is written in bass clef sounding a full octave lower than notated. The first existence of an instrument of this sort was designed by the Parisian instrument innovator Adolphe Sax (1814–1894), the inventor of the saxophone, who dubbed it the subcontrabass saxhorn. These instruments were all very rare and never received a great deal of attention. The first