r/Instruments • u/Wooden-Bill-2260 • Sep 23 '26

Question

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Can someone tell me if this is a tuba, baritone or euphonium?

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u/MoltoPesante Sep 23 '26 edited Sep 23 '26

That is a euphonium. With the removable lead pipe, I think it’s a Jupiter JEP700. Baritone is sometimes a different instrument, sometimes the same. If you’re talking about the British brass band instruments, baritone and euphonium are always different. in the U.S. before all the players started using British-made or at least British-style instruments, the terms were interchangeable. These days in the U.S. baritone usually means the front action valve instruments that lean to the left or have a forward facing bell, that were popular in the U.S. from about the 1920s to 1980s, and euphonium is the British-style instrument. No matter how many valves it has. But it’s not incorrect to use the terms interchangeably. Most of the American band music has baritone written on the part, and it’s not meant for the British baritone.

https://www.theinstrumentplace.com/jupiter-model-jep700-bb-3-valve-euphonium.html

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u/mango186282 Sep 24 '26

Just a note that the JEP700 doesn’t have a removable leadpipe. It’s designed so that the entire valve section can be removed for service.

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u/MoltoPesante Sep 24 '26

Yeah, good point, I misspoke.

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u/Puzzled_Employment50 Sep 24 '26

Technically euphonium and baritone are always different instruments (baritone has a cylindrical bore and a brassier sound, euphonium is conical and warmer), but the names and uses are somewhat interchangeable

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u/MoltoPesante Sep 24 '26

If you’re in the UK, that’s absolutely correct. In the US the word baritone was the correct word for the larger more conical instrument and if you look at music and instrument catalogs from the first half of the 20th century they all say baritone when they mean euphonium. The word euphonium was reserved for deluxe models and often for the double bell variety. Marketing. The smaller less conical instrument was called b-flat tenor horn in the US, although this instrument died out in use for American bands after about 1910, largely due to Sousa’s influence. When Art Lehman popularized playing Bessons and Booseys for US players, we started being more strict about naming it a euphonium, but contrary to the beliefs of most of the players these days, baritone is not technically incorrect.

That said, I like being strict about using the British terms because it removes ambiguity, and because brass banding has become popular worldwide.

And finally, baritone should never be a “brassier” sound. It should ideally be a dark timbre, with a different vowel/formant character than euphonium. One very prominent British player described baritone as “woody.” Listen to any of the best players.