TubeNet

What's the story with the Brass Bow in Chicago now that Wayne Tanabe is working for Yamaha in NYC?

Josh Wirt

I think one of my Helicons was one of the last things Wayne finished and probably drove him to NY.

Long story short - bought it at a local garage sale where the two featured items were a "tuba" and a new yellow casket. Seller claimed to be a retired band director and said horn belong to great grandad (also was a BD) who apparently used horn to auditon for CSO way back when. ))))

With such a pedigree (I mean how can you pass on such a "Capable of Winning Major Auditons" 3-valve Eb Helicon). I bought it cheap knowing that Gene Pokorny of the CSO would have to step down someday allowing me (middle age Municipal Band Musician) to step in and win/steal the CSO auditon) over all those guys with their York look a like BATS.

So I called Wayne up, as he had done several other horns for me and he says to drop it off in two days. Horn had been stored in a barn but other than being heavily tarnished (black) it had virtually no dents.
When I get horn to put in car I notice a couple dead horse flys and as I'm driving up to the Brass Bow I realize that the thing really stinks, but I'm thinking it must be the tarnish.

Drop it off for a play restoration and go to my office. I no sooner get back to the office when it's Wayne on the phone going nuts because when they dipped it a ton of horse flys and maggots come out along with what they thought were several dead decayed rats. The stink was so bad they had to dump the tank open all the windows and go home.

Upshot was the rats had jammed into the horn and decayed at the point of the wrap that would be at the bottom of your lower back if you were playing the horn - resulting in Wayne having to replace with a patch from a donor horn. It is such a superb job that they did in fixing it. He also had to make a new leadpipe. The low pitch/high pitch did confuse them as they thought at one point that it was pitched in D

Apparently Wayne was watching some documentary on TV which said that if spooked, possoms will jam themselves into a narrowing tube (like the Helicon) so he is convinced that instead of rats the deceased were possums. It took a couple years, but the horn which is an early 20's Frank Holton Monster Eb plays well with a nice big sound for an Eb. The guys at the shop say it is Wayne's favorite story.

I have not been there since Sept. but would assume they're still going strong as they had a lot of good folks. Wish Wayne the best in his new gig.

I had my horn ultrasonically cleaned, valves aligned, and new pads installed at Brass Bow right after Christmas 2005. The gentlemen working at the shop did a fine job.

Now that Wayne is geographically, emotionally, (and as soon as the sale of the business is final, financially) divorced from Brass Bow, I asked him for his objective opinion of where to have such work done in the Chicago area. He still wholeheartedly recommended Brass Bow. He cited that Brass Bow specializes in work on professional/individual horns, as opposed to other shops (including some equipped with an ultrasonic tank) that do primarily school horns en masse.