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What is the difference between the newer hellebergs and the older "prewar" hellebergs? I know that there is a difference but I'm not sure what it is. Thanks!!

Here goes nothing.

First off, you have to spell it hellenburg to get any response from the TFJ. Especially a response from the elephant...he really likes it when you spell it that way. Secondly, it is my understanding (correct me if I am wrong, I am just going on second-hand info here) that the early hellebergs were the originals and the modern ones are all copies of one or another of the originals.


Sou

The biggest difference is a few hundred bucks extra you can get for one of the older ones on flee-bay.

The tooling used for the earliest could be quickly dulled, and thus varied a tiny amount from piece to piece between that , operators, and any work that involved some amount of hand process.

In that variation was born the concept of "hot" horns, "hot" mouthpieces, and also real "dogs".

All work processing took a giant leap forward with the war effort, and the possibility of getting a VERY GOOD piece went away with standarization. Thankfully, so did the possibility of getting on QUITE SO BAD as before.

The older mouthpieces are rarer, and most of the really rauchy pieces have long since been discarded, so that people with the means are willing to pay outrageous prices in the hope the this one will be "one of the good ones". Statistically, it's most likely to be just one of the acceptable ones, but then, often the people paying these big prices are not the ones capable of using it to it's fullest, anyway.

Since you can identify the difference by it's shape, you can tell which is which. And since you can tell, and since the tuba giants of yore used this kind of piece, lots of people want one, and the price follows demand.