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maybe a "pocket","echo" Sovereign, compensating, but still with 6 valves...

He said it is virtually certain that the quality of the instruments produced from now on will be substantially inferior. Although they will attempt to copy the design, the new factory will be unable to meet the quality standards we are familiar with. He told me that it is even unclear in which country the new Besson will be made.

So folks, what do you think? Will there be a Chinese made Prestige? A Pakistani Sovereign?

Those of us who have been following this topic here and elsewhere (4 bars rest, Mouthpiece.com) would argue that nothing is certain. Since your friend has a vested interest in seeing a competitor disappear, he might be gulty of wishful thinking. Buffet Crampon is the new owner of the Besson brand, and their press release referred to building a new factory to manufacture Besson but not a location. Speculation centers on France (Courtois) and Germany (contract manufacture by Nirshl, perhaps, or VMI?) where Buffet Crampon has other facilities. No one knows what Buffet Crampon have planned. Since Courtois and Besson compete directly in some markets, consolidation seems inevitable. Will Besson become the "student" line and Courtois the "professional" line? Will both continue with different target customers (say brass band and orchestral)? I don't think that anyone outside Buffet Crampon know, and maybe not even those inside know yet. Stay tuned.

And I have a bit of trouble with the phrase about "the high quality standards we are familiar with". High quality hasn't been a familiar trait of recent Besson manufacture, so perhaps the new factory will be an improvement, wherever it is.

Bill Anderson
Besson Sovereign E flat, King 2341 B flat

windshieldbug wrote:maybe a "pocket","echo" Sovereign, compensating, but still with 6 valves...

Hey, is that a compensating euphonium in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

MartyNeilan wrote:Hey, is that a compensating euphonium in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Sorry? There seems to be an echo in here...

Besson was history from the moment they closed the Edgeware factory and subcontracted everything out. With parts coming from Germany, beginner instruments being subcontracted from India, and so on, "Besson," in the form of what used to be the best instrument maker in the world, hasn't been around for a long time.

iiipopes wrote:Besson was history from the moment they closed the Edgeware factory and subcontracted everything out. With parts coming from Germany, beginner instruments being subcontracted from India, and so on, "Besson," in the form of what used to be the best instrument maker in the world, hasn't been around for a long time.

Even though I own one I don't know much Besson history. When did the Edgeware factory close? When was the merger with Boosey? My horn has London and Paris engraved on the bell. Were the horns produced in both locations and if so is there a way to tell which place a particular horn was made?

On my BBb New Standard it appears the bell stack is actually two pieces if you look on the inside there appears to a solder line half way down - was this standard production technique or a repair after it left the factory?

Any info appreciated.

Besson and B&H had merged many years previously. The Edgeware plant was closed as part of the "modernization" of the Company after it became a part of the Music Group, which used to also own several other companies, including Hofner, and which has one by one divested itself.

Re the bell seam: is it a straight line, or does it have little "teeth" in the line? My 1971 Besson New Standard 3V BBb Comp has two triangles set in opposite one another on the bell with the little "teeth" apparent in the line, which is factory. I've been looking for the "other" line in my bell which I'm sure is there, but haven't found it. Maybe it isn't! What year of manufacture is your Besson?

iiipopes wrote:Besson and B&H had merged many years previously. The Edgeware plant was closed as part of the "modernization" of the Company after it became a part of the Music Group, which used to also own several other companies, including Hofner, and which has one by one divested itself.

Re the bell seam: is it a straight line, or does it have little "teeth" in the line? My 1971 Besson New Standard 3V BBb Comp has two triangles set in opposite one another on the bell with the little "teeth" apparent in the line, which is factory. I've been looking for the "other" line in my bell which I'm sure is there, but haven't found it. Maybe it isn't! What year of manufacture is your Besson?

It is a 1971 as well (I bought it in 1981). This horn I keep at my municipal band's performance center so I won't be able to look at it until next Monday. The seam is maybe 14-18 inches down from the top of the bell stack and it is a complete circle (no teeth) that is visible on the inside of the stack.

When I bought the horn I had it complete rebuilt by Allied in Elkhorn, WI which at that time was run by one of the Getzens. I'm wondering if it was cut when it was in their hands. I would have thought if that was the case they would have mentioned it especially since I visited them several times to check on the progress over the six weeks it took them to rebuild and silver plate it. I don't know if they are still there but they were great to work with and that horn was better than new when they handed it back.[/i]

Take time out to read this article by Dennis Wedgwood, from Wales, England;


Boosey & Hawkes (Besson) – The True Story

I was four and a half years old when my father decided to present me with his cornet. It was a Besson. He’d bought it second hand in 1935 at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, and, as he was playing Soprano Cornet with Fairys Band at the time, he didn’t need it.
It gleamed: leather case polished, with my name engraved on the lid. My Besson Cornet, with it’s separate ‘back’ slide for ‘A’, or Low Pitch as it was called then, earned its keep in two works bands – Ferrodo & Clayton Aniline – with me as a 12 year old boy soloist at 30 [pre- Euro] shillings per week, eventually spending lots of years in the pit at the Royal Opera House grinding out Swan Lake Neapolitans & Prokofiev Nightmares – for me anyway.
The only thing I did to my Besson Cornet was to fit a third slide lever for the Cornet duet with Mr. Dilley, the Principal, in Verdi’s Opera Don Carlos, when we recorded it with Guilini. Mr. Guilini, until he heard us, thought that the cornet was less mellow in sound than the trumpet – rather than the opposite. Oh, and Mr. Dilley used an even older Besson Cornet than mine, still with its ‘echo’ attachment.

Generations pass, and my Besson Cornet has long ago been presented to my sons – who perhaps think of it as an heirloom. But it still works today.
So what went wrong? What happened to the world-wide reputation of the famous British Musical Instrument Company Boosey & Hawkes [Besson]?

INSTRUMENT DESIGN
It’s said that the ‘death of a company’ is when management has got rid of the ‘old gaffer’ who could remember trying something twenty years before that didn’t work.
I used to know ‘old gaffers’ that previously worked at Boosey & Hawkes when I was a 16-year-old apprentice at Meyers & Harrison in Manchester. They must be turning in their graves.

What’s the point in designing the main tuning slide on a tuba to be less in length than a cornet main tuning slide, the latter being 3 or 4 times higher in pitch? Even a basic knowledge of physics & acoustics is enough to know that the pitch/length of a brass instrument doesn’t start at the mouthpiece. Ignoring ‘end correction’ of the bell, and ambient temperature, the Pitch/length is always somewhere down the players throat. Were B & H thinking of cloning standardised bass players? Did the designer ever sit in a cold church waiting to play with his tuning slide fully in, knowing his or her first note is still going to be flat? Obviously not.

There are formulae for this sort of thing, but the B & H physicist left years ago, to start his own very successful instrument company, and was not replaced.
If tuba, euphonium & bass players, as we know, are not all the same length, weight & size & don’t all use the same types of mouthpiece or play at the same angle, why make their instruments one size? Why aren’t the mouthpipes adjustable for height & angle? It can be done. Why hasn’t it? B & H basses & euphoniums used to be part of their flagship.
Yamaha make some of their instruments with detachable valve sections. It’s a small step, but a massive one for players and technicians.

STAINLESS STEEL VALVES
At some period over the last few years Boosey & Hawkes [Besson] changed their valve material from Monel, or similar, to stainless steel. Presumably this was to make the manufacturing process cheaper. [The normal process is to start with a larger diameter valve tube to take the pressure of passage insertion, and then grind it down to size.] This crass decision of using Stainless Steel has now put a finite life on an instrument. Stainless steel is not a bearing material. Any good engineer will tell you this. So what happens? A valve, made of material as hard as the cutlery we use to eat, is in constant frictional contact with the relatively soft brass of the instrument casing. So instead of the two different bearing materials ‘mating’ together,
i.e. Brass/Monel/German Silver etc., the stainless steel valve grinds out the valve casing itself on each depression by the player. Add a small blemish to the stainless steel and we have the perfect scourer.
Of course, as Stainless Steel is not a bearing material, valves stick – the player takes them out, believing that oil is needed. This grinds & scores the inner casing even more when they re-insert them. In a very short time the valve casing of the instrument becomes triangular in section.
The reason for this is: looking at a valve, it can be approximately sectioned into three vertical banks of holes with three continuous lengths of metal separating them. The latter, having more mass, grind away the casing at a different rate to the holed sections. Q.E.D. triangular casings = ruined instrument.
Prove it yourselves. Loosen the top valve cap of your ‘Besson’ Tuba, Tenor Horn etc, lift the valve clear of the pin, then carefully rotate the valve. Does it rotate freely, or does it feel like driving on a flat tyre? If the latter – yes, you’ve very likely got Stainless Steel valves and your casings are getting nicely chewed.

On the other hand, improvements that wouldn’t have cost any money have been ignored, thus costing players thousands of pounds over the years in repairs.
On the ‘bottom sprung’ valves i.e. basses, euphoniums etc. there is a small area between the top of the valve itself and the valve cap in the casings that collects detritus. This quite often prevents the valve from being taken out, embedding itself between the valve and the top of the casing as the player attempts to pull it clear. The valve jams, leaving something of a dilemma. Does the player continue to try & pull the valve clear [this jams it] or just push it back, unoiled? Very often, in battle conditions, more pressure is applied to pull it clear. Valve jams solidly, lots of willing helpers then try home remedies: - end result – trip to the repairers and a very large bill.
All this could have been prevented by a small recess bored around the top of the valve casing to allow any dirt to be pushed into it. Result: - less sticking valves, lower repair bills and peace of mind for the player – at no extra cost to the manufacturer. Has it been done……?

FINANCE DEPARTMENT DESIGN [TINKERING RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT]
As I said earlier about the ‘old gaffer’ remembering early years – triggered tuning slides on cornets!
We used to discuss things like this when I was an apprentice.
The Patent Office Archives are full of them, including Distins multi-belled fantasies. When a player uses combinations 1 & 3, or all three valves simultaneously, it’s the third slide, or perhaps the first valve slide in certain circumstances, that needs lengthening, not flattening the whole instrument with a trigger on the main tuning slide.
This is what I call Finance Department Design. Improves nothing, cheap to do, and should be sold on Daytime TV. But in this case I believe that you do get a spanner with every so-called ‘top of the range’ Besson Cornet, and levers that George Stephenson would have been proud to use on his ‘Rocket’ Steam Engine.
Players today want customisation. They want choice: interchangeable bells, mouthpipes, different metals and such – exactly like they choose their mouthpieces. Everyone’s different.
Choice & Customisation happens in the Automotive industry. Fords are not all black now. Yet why should a firm like B & H insist on dictating to the virtuoso and the not so virtuoso brass player what tools they should use? Why should Brass Band cornet players, from the third to the principal, be persuaded to play a standardised instrument advertised by the current promotional virtuoso?
The lower cornets of the band might want a different timbre to the principal. Make interchangeable bells – we do, because I for onewouldn’t dare to dictate my prejudices to some of the players we meet. They are too seriously good.

It’s not easy to get good sheet brass in Britain suitable for musical instruments. Which is one of the reasons we electro-form our bells: copper, nickel, silver – even sandwiches of the same. By good sheet brass I mean a soft, high copper content, malleable material. ButI’m sure it’s possible to get if ordered in large quantities, so there’s no excuse for B & H not to have done so. Their bell material has deteriorated over the years to the constituency of a Coke Can. Their method of making them is also more akin to the drinks trade– hydraulic expansion, brazed ‘China Man’s Hat’ seams with the end result [with no alternative for the player, remember] being a work hardened product that could be used to knock nails in. And, I suspect, internal grain growth due to hydraulic expansion.

The Germans, Americans and the Japanese to a large extent use good brass, why couldn’t Boosey & Hawkes? The answer is, production managed by the Accounts Department. Never mind the instruments primary purpose, its sound, lets just try & make it look nice & shiny & flog it as quickly as possible. Competitors, Bach & Yamaha for example, realise that no company can stand still and have eaten into our UK home market with their instruments. They’ve succeeded by not falling into those traps.

QUALITY CONTROL [OR LACK OF IT] AT BOOSEY & HAWKES
The only thing the UK can produce & sell in these times is quality.
Doesn’t matter what the product is; it has to be the absolute top of the range. Britain cannot compete with countries whose labour costs are a fortieth of ours. Which means that we either abandon our manufacturing capacity entirely, or design & make things that low labour costs countries cannot (yet). This obviously includes scientific research. Research & Development is a priority: if we don’t keep this up our lead erodes. I’m not talking about Accounts Department R & D “can we make it cheaperâ€

Highams wrote:Take time out to read this article by Dennis Wedgwood, from Wales, England;

Boosey & Hawkes (Besson) – The True Story

STAINLESS STEEL VALVES
At some period over the last few years Boosey & Hawkes [Besson] changed their valve material from Monel, or similar, to stainless steel. Presumably this was to make the manufacturing process cheaper. [The normal process is to start with a larger diameter valve tube to take the pressure of passage insertion, and then grind it down to size.] This crass decision of using Stainless Steel has now put a finite life on an instrument. Stainless steel is not a bearing material. Any good engineer will tell you this. So what happens? A valve, made of material as hard as the cutlery we use to eat, is in constant frictional contact with the relatively soft brass of the instrument casing. So instead of the two different bearing materials ‘mating’ together,
i.e. Brass/Monel/German Silver etc., the stainless steel valve grinds out the valve casing itself on each depression by the player. Add a small blemish to the stainless steel and we have the perfect scourer.
Of course, as Stainless Steel is not a bearing material, valves stick – the player takes them out, believing that oil is needed. This grinds & scores the inner casing even more when they re-insert them. In a very short time the valve casing of the instrument becomes triangular in section.
The reason for this is: looking at a valve, it can be approximately sectioned into three vertical banks of holes with three continuous lengths of metal separating them. The latter, having more mass, grind away the casing at a different rate to the holed sections. Q.E.D. triangular casings = ruined instrument.
Prove it yourselves. Loosen the top valve cap of your ‘Besson’ Tuba, Tenor Horn etc, lift the valve clear of the pin, then carefully rotate the valve. Does it rotate freely, or does it feel like driving on a flat tyre? If the latter – yes, you’ve very likely got Stainless Steel valves and your casings are getting nicely chewed.

Denis Wedgwood, Llys Pres/Saturn Water Keys/Wedgwood Cornets & Trumpets

www.deniswedgwood.com denis.wedgwood@ntlworld.com

Article is dedicated to Robert Fisk, Journalist, who searches out & exposes Global Truths

Very interesting - thanks for sharing this article.

Do you know approximately what year they switched from Monel to Stainless Steel?

I find this topic of stainless steel valves very interesting. For one, my B&H Imperial euph has stainless steel valves and my horn was manufactured in 1966.

Secondly, I was under the impression that stainless steel was supposed to be better in the long run than Monel. IN fact, I think I read somewhere that Hirsbrunner goes so far as to consider their stainless steel pistons as a plus! Yamaha is the only manufacturer that I'm aware that still uses Monel. I think they have the smoothest action, but for some reason the stainless pistons appear to have FASTER action.

The implication is that they are also wearing away the piston casings FASTER, which leads to a situation which cannot be corrected...

You can occasionally see copper-plated (no nickel) pistons from the 20's and 30's on instruments. Since plating copper is very easy, I've wondered if this wasn't a better approach as it saves on the casing wear.

TheEngineer wrote:Right now I'm using rotaries, they just seem to jive a bit better for me.

Your tuba been jiving you? I wouldn't put up with that!

Curious about "stainless steel is not a bearing material" -- what does that mean? Web search comes up with many, many references for stainless steel bearings. Maybe I misunderstand. Are the piston and its case supposed to be sacrificing metal under normal use, so the only defense for the case is to make the piston softer? Wouldn't lubrication be a better strategy?

Donn wrote:Wouldn't lubrication be a better strategy?

Certainly! But casings are a lot harder (pardon the pun... ) to remove and plate than valves, so if something's gunna wear (god forbid), I'd rather it be the valve!

When you have metal moving on metal, eventually there will be wear, regardless of the type of metal or the lubrication. So, you want the part that is the most easily removable and rebuildable to be the "softer" metal. That's why the casings are (or should be!) hard brass and the valves either plated or something like monel.

In automobiles a generation ago, the crankshafts were (most still are) a hardened steel, and the bearings inserted in the journals and piston rods and caps were softer, called "white metal," as it is a lot easier to pull the journal caps and the pistons to replace bearings which are squeezed into place by bolting everything down than to replace a crankshaft. LIkewise, I'd much rather replate and lap in a new valve than replace, or pay for replacement of a valve block.

The same logic applies to valve guides. The King 2341 comes with metal guides; one of the things I had done on the first (annual) trip to the shop was to have them replaced with plastic. The plastic will indeed wear out faster - but that's a feature, not a bug!

If I remember correctly, that was our standard answer to reported software problems... "It's not a bug, it's a feature!"

sloan wrote:The same logic applies to valve guides. The King 2341 comes with metal guides; one of the things I had done on the first (annual) trip to the shop was to have them replaced with plastic. The plastic will indeed wear out faster - but that's a feature, not a bug!

Hmm. I never thought of the valve guides that way before. Good point!

Well, King describes the metal valve guides as being better for students because they don't need to be replaced as often.
The plastic valveguide are supposedly better because they're quiter, but they get replaced more often.

I prefer the plastic due to the quietness but I still use metal because I don't see it to be that much of a threat to the safety of my horn, and I'm just too lazy to replace them.