John EricsonBack not long ago — about a month and a half ago — I posted (here) about how I had completed a natural horn body based on a vintage (pre WWI, probably) Josef Glassl valved horn.
Well, I could have left it like it was. It played OK. But I was really not a fan of the angle of the tuning slide. Seems like a small thing, right? Except it just screamed something was wrong with the instrument, it really looked odd. And also, I was not happy (among other things) how the overall wrap of the horn had opened up a bit with all the heavy dent work, which did not let me use the original bell brace.
Fast forward to the past couple weeks. My wife is out of town and the weather is unseasonably cool. I could use the shop still, and this was something I could fix now!
I saw three options as to ways I could resolve it. All involved a longer first branch, one way or another. I decided on what I’ll call option number 1. Spent close to a day working on that, before I realized it was not going to work. Would have had to sharply bend some fragile tubing. However, because I tried to do option 1, then I could not do option 2, which left me with only option 3, at least with parts I had on hand. The result was I ended up with a first branch that was 7.5″ longer, with a slower taper.
With that decided, because I had made the horn once already and the small end of the first branch was from a valved horn, I’ll just say now that the tuning slide is off center. I’m going to have to live with that.
What’s it look like?
There are a lot of positive things to report. First, this horn looks great with the nickel silver garland on the bell, and the bell size is great for hand stopping.
This horn has parts from multiple horns. Starting with the bell (with the cool badge!), that is from a Josef Glassl horn. The long section of first branch connected to that is from an unmarked (probably eastern European) horn that was parted out. Next there is a sort portion of another first branch, that is from an Amborg horn, parted out and purchased at a antique mall. The slide tubes are from the “H” horn valve section, the natural horn that was rebuilt earlier in the summer (see that here). The bow of the tuning slide is from a Mirafone horn. The remaining tubing is .440 tubing from Rick Seraphinoff. As to the braces, the bell brace and the big brace near that are original to the unmarked horn that provided the long section of first branch (that it is connected to!), the small nickel silver brace is from a Chinese instrument, and the tuning slide brace was in my parts supply, from who knows what horn.
The most critical tubing is the bell, and I made sure every part fit together as perfectly as possible.
I do like as much as possible to use parts from the same horn, out of respect for the craftsmen. I was really happy to incorporate in particular that heavy and artistic brace between the bell area and the tuning slide, and also the original bell brace.
Speaking of that, I originally had to do heavy dent work on the bell, and the bell wrap opened up more and also the bell tail was really hard. But if I fixed that issue, the new first branch would fit perfectly. So I got to it; I annealed the bell tail, filled it with Cerrobend (all of it I have! It weighed a ton) and was ready to bend the bell tail. BUT: now the new first branch fit perfectly! I didn’t do anything except anneal it and fill it. What?
What happened is either one of two things (and maybe both). When I annealed the bell it may have released tension such that it reverted back to the original shape. Related, it was sitting on the bell when I annealed it, it’s also possible that the gentle effect of gravity when the metal was red hot also bent it down.
In any case, I melted the Cerrobend out and then found it had developed two cracks. In the photos you will see the two new patches, which give the horn a bit more character.
I also made these two couplers below, the small one being newly completed last week.
If you go back to the “before” photos (here), the small coupler uses a tube from the 1st valve slide setup of the original Glassl horn, and the larger coupler uses tubing from the 3rd valve slide setup.
In practice, the smaller coupler takes F down to E, and the longer one Eb down to D. I’ll plan to make F and Eb crooks for this horn and use those couplers with them, to keep the Glassl parts together and give players the four most essential keys for working on horn solo literature.
How does it play?
My initial testing says this is a really nice horn. Really nice. And better than before, which says also that changing out the first branch was a good idea.
With that, the horn is done for now. It will probably be October before I really get back in the shop to work on the crooks, but I’ll figure out something so it’s still usable by my students in the fall (a G crook plus a coupler for F, etc.).