Re: Any info on a Gerhard Schneider Tuba


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Posted by Klaus on March 08, 2003 at 17:01:06:

In Reply to: Any info on a Gerhard Schneider Tuba posted by Jeff Hildebrand on March 08, 2003 at 16:13:41:

The Meister Gerhard Schneider brand was used by the GDR conglomerate known as B&S as one of their house brands, when making instruments which where not quite kosher. Downright copies of other makers models or sold anonymously by a third party company.

One quite well known sample in horn circles is the copy of the Alexander double horn with the huge shift rotor.

B&S basically used modular designs, where the bodies in the basic Weltklang as well as in the pro-level B&S, Hoyer, Scherzer, and K. Wolfram lines were identical.

However the basic line, which also came in numerous stenciled disguises, had S-links and only the basic number of valves (mostly 3).

The pro line instruments had ball-and-socket linkages, sometimes nickel silver rotor casings, and almost always more than the basic number of valves, when we speak of horns and tubas. Often 5 or 6 valves.

Of course the best craftsmen were allocated to the assembly of the pro lines, but the parts in both lines came out of the same in-house "sub-contracting" departments, which was the GDR way of continuing the old Saxonian-Bohemian tradition of having several master shops specialising in each their type of parts: bells, branches, valves, and more. There then was a smaller number of master shops, which did the design and the assembly, and which put their name on the finished instrument.

If one shall understand the brass instruments' sales policies of the GDR era, then one must know, that the Warsaw pact countries had very few industrial goods, that the West wanted to buy, because their technological level was outdated. Yet these countries badly needed currency convertible to US $$ to buy essential western technology to their societies. Like Volvo cars to Honecker and his gang.

That led to a special industry, Devisenbeschaffung = currency procurement, where every imaginable trick, criminal or not, counted.

One of the less criminal ones was to sell high, and less high, grade brass instruments below cost prices on the western markets.

I have 8 GDR era brasses of the above mentioned brands plus a Syhre of Leipzig corno da caccia also having Markneukirchen parts.

If there might be a point in this posting, then that all GDR era rotary brasses are well made. Even if the linkage of a basic line instrument is worn out, it might very well be worth the investment of a new set of linkages. Of course the usual considerations of denting, wear and corrosion should be counted in. If I were asked to choose between GDR era rotary brasses and Miraphone instruments in similar conditions, I would take the GDR instruments any time.

Klaus


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