Well, after doing some more research on whether Getzen still manufactures tubas, including the Canadian Brass model, the jury is still out.

One item that does keep them in the column is that Getzen is the Meinl-Weston distributor for the USA:

http://www.meinl-weston.com/agents.htm

I just heard about this, and followed the link:
http://www.tubaforum.it/Lists/Notizie/DispForm.htm?ID=35&Source=http%3a%2f%2... fwww%2etubaforum%2eit%2f

babelfish translation:

With great displeasure we learn that Kalison(www.kalison.it), the prestigious factory of musical instruments of Milan, stops the own activity. The Kalison, founded in the 1928 from Benicchio Batiste and continued then from the son Angel and the Michela grandaughter, has maintained in the years a handicraft print to which it does not have intentional to renounce. The human factor é always be to the center of the Kalison production: every professional instrument Kalison was dealt singularly from the able maestranze and tested from important protagonists of Italian and foreign orchestras that with their collaboration of it suggested the continuous improvements. It puts into effect them conditions of the market do not concur with the company to continue the activity that a lot has made in these years for the brass, in particular horn, tuba, cimbasso and euphonium, for the band and orchestrale world. TubaForum.it had been taken care recently of Kalison with an article on the stand of the from Milan company to Musikmesse 2005 of Frankfurt(www.tubaforum.it/Lists/Articoli/DispForm.htm?ID=17).

iiipopes wrote on 07/29/05 at 19:58:02:

Mirafone places the fifth valve in line before the first. When I was having a fourth valve installed on my old Eb F. Holton, I wanted to go with a rotor placed in line ahead of the valve block. My tech said it wouldn't work, I asked him why, since all 5 valve tubas I've seen were set up this way and he couldn't give me an answer. I'd still like to know.

iiipopes wrote on 10/07/05 at 16:17:32:


TubaNews.com reports that Walter Nirschl has purchased Kalison.

Here's the link to the article:
http://www.tubanews.com/articles/contentid-230.html

A few updates gleaned from other fora:

Willson has updated their website:
http://www.willson.ch/

The USA version of the Willson website is here:
http://www.willsonbrass.com/

Walter Nirschl now has a website:
http://walternirschl.de/

Click on the "Instrumente" link for his lines of brass instruments, including bm symphonic, Meister Walter Nirschl, Modell Uwe Komischke, and Kalison, which he bought when the company closed some time ago.

Some of the former people at Kalison now have their own company, G&P Wind instruments. Here is the tuba page:

http://www.gp-wind.com/ing/contenitor.php?menu=catalogo&type=tuba&uso=pr...