Enough Already!

After yesterday's talk about Mike and his euphonium I recieved so many hits that my site crashed for about 2 hours. The questions could be generally broken down to 2 categories: the 1st being "What the hell is a euphonium?" (90%) and the 2nd for the more knowledgeable: "What's the difference between a baritone and a euphonium?" (10%) As for the latter, if you carefully check the pictures above you'll see that the essentially meaningless differences between them are analogous to those of the two instruments in question. In other words....not a whole heckuva lot.
As for the former question well, lets just say that for our purposes a euphonium is a small tuba and the baritone is an even smaller tuba even though saying such a thing is blasphemy in brass instrument circles (people are foaming at the mouth as we speak!!) One has a cylindrical bore and the other a conical bore but its all the same bore to me.
If you're ever unfortunate enough to be cornered by a low brass player at a party and he decides to explain the minute and unimportant differences between the euphonium, baritone, Wagner tuba, tuba, souzaphone, ophecleide etc. just turn quietly and leave. Trying to change the subject never works.