Posted by K on January 31, 2004 at 01:50:22:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Any Valve Trombones for sale posted by Ryan on January 30, 2004 at 17:37:36:
I had the good fortune to hear Bob Brookmeyer live with our radio big band around 1986. When I fetched my ticket, there was a break in the band sound-check.
However, there was a player improvising with a sound, which I never had heard before. That was BB playing his valve bone using the cone shaped foam sitting on the microphone as a mute. He also did so during his solos with band background. How he managed to play in tune with microphone placed in such an acoustically unfortunate place, escapes me.
I knew Minnick slide trombones, but didn't know, that he made valve trombones. In the intermission Bob told me, that the bell was a plain Minnick bell, whereas Minnick had added 1st and 3rd slide triggers to a standard Conn valve section. Marvellous sound output! Of course mainly because of BB. With his embouchure control a slide is not necessary to make smooth glissandos.
Rob McConnell also plays a special valve trombone. He has put the bell of a symphony size Conn 8H on the medium small standard Conn valve section.
The Czech/German tradition uses rotary valve trombones, even if Dvorak wrote his agile orchestral trombone parts for quite advanced piston valve trombones with slide triggers.
Cerveny still carries rotary 4 valve trombones in Bb and low F, as do probably some German maker(-s). Some Bavarian folk bands use the Bb version. A very small band with clarinet and accordion had their valve bone player fulfil the combined functions of tuba, Kaiserbariton, and sometimes trumpet. Quite versatile. The Bavarian folk music is not especially complicated, often down to 2 or 3 chords, but it has a strong authenticity to it.
I have a 3 rotary valves German bone. The original mouthpiece is small, but it can take a bass bone mouthpiece and then carries quite a big sound.
So can my two small Belgian Mahillon 3 piston bones, but they suffer from the general problem of the valve bone: one has to push the air rather much if the sound shall project. Some correspondent once wrote, that reason for the stuffiness of many valve bones comes from a frequent shortcut taken by many makers: they put a plain trumpet piston block on their valve bones.
Yamaha at some time made a few symphonic bore rotary valve bones. I have only seen one documented. It should have been a good instrument, but apparently the model is not marketed on a wider basis.
Klaus