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Horn players are a funny lot. In fact, many student horns are made entirely of the same kind of brass (i.e. no nickel silver caps, ferrules or outer slides)--as are many inexpensive tubas.

This horn that your colleague waited 5 years for--was it welded together? Seems like all the joins of the tubes would need to be of plain old soft solder, no?

PhilW. wrote:100% of the same metal would mean that even the valves are made of brass, right? This wouldn't work, since brass is too soft and corrosion-prone. It might have benefits to have all of the tubing be of the same metal, because this would mean that the whole flare would have to be one-piece, which could lead to better resonance.

I think he was talking about a horn (French), which would have rotary valves. All-brass works just fine for them (in fact, aside from the caps, most rotary valves are all-brass). I'm not sure how wild I'd be about brass spatulas and valve caps, but they've been done before.

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winston wrote:Yeah, we're talking if a tuba would have rotary valves. Would it have better sound/resonnance if everything was made of 100% the same metal?

I'll let you be the judge. Amati rotary tubas are plain old brass, though and through (see the post on the Arion BBb).

Quite honestly, I don't think you'd notice a bit of nickel here and there. Some say nickel (nickel-silver, really a type of brass) leadpipes give a slightly brighter sound, but I'm going to suggest that a mouthpiece change will more than swamp that one out.

winston wrote:I was talking to a french horn player who had just recieved their horn after he were on a 5 year waiting list for it. It was hand made and he requested that it be made of 100% the same metal, for better resonnance.

Maybe your friend not only requested that the metal all be the same, but that it is something fairly exotic and all came from the same 'heat'. This is fairly common with steels that go into products where the origin of the materials have to be tracable. Perhaps the brass is a special temper (or hardness). As far as brass pistons or rotors are concerned... that's an old practice.