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Here are some pix from a gig we played at the Reading Public Museum:

Interesting!

Tubawise because it is a 19" bell on an Eb tuba not engraved Sovereign. If the bell is original from the factory, this instrument was made between 1979 and 1982 (both years included).

Which is the pitch of the natural trumpet? It may be determined from fingerings of the tuba and of the horn.

Klaus

It is the original bell but not the original lead pipe. The engraving on the bell read "Made by Boosey & Hawkes in England - IMPERIAL" I had a 981 pipe put on a few years back. It originally had the higher and narrower 982 leadpipe on it. You can see the mark on the bell where it was originally attached. I am not 100% sure but I believe the horn dates from the early 70's. I bought it in 1985.

Here is a close up of it


The Baroque trumpet is in D. We play an arrangement of "Let the Bright Seraphim" from "Samson" by Handel, in which the other trumpet player plays the soprano aria and Chris plays the "trumpet" part on baroque trumpet. it also gives the low brass a good workout!

also if you look closely at pic 2 yu will see i am using an original Blokepiece with the titanium H-Kote:

k

i wish i would have thought enough to have recorded the gig.

The Eb tuba and the single Bb horn play either parts of an A chord or parts of a D chord. The only common pitch of natural trumpet matching that is D.

There were made 19" bells from around 1970. I have seen one used as a replacement for a 15" bell. Possibly these large Eb tubas could be ordered as custom models, but they were not marketed until 1979. The 19" tubas sold until the end of 1982, Eb and BBb alike, all were with the 3+1 comp set-up and with the narrow receiver. The 3 top pistons only compers came in 15" in Eb and in 17" in BBb.

The transition models up to the introduction of the 19"/large receiver Sovereign models in early 1983 were engraved Besson (some of them had the cross-over engraving Besson Imperial never seen in any other context). Your sample being engraved B&H might point towards it being either an earlier conversion or an earlier custom model.

Klaus

That's a very interesting strap set-up you have there. Is it as comfortable and functional as it looks? Is it commercially available or just something you came up with for yourself?

Thanks.

The strap is simply one of those flag holsters that they use in colorguard to hold the American flag or school flag. i have a stewart stand mounted to the horn to raise the mouthpiece to my mouth when I play while sitting (see the picture of my horn above). So i simply stick the peg from the stewart stand into the holster cup. It works pretty well. I still have to balance the horn but the weight is on the shoulders rather than the arms. The holster originally had two straps that went over both shoulders and I cut one off so it just has one. But I may get another double strap and try that again next time; not sure which I like better. We have a whole box full of these at the school that we do not use anymore so I just "borrowed" it. I would like to try to get some kind of belt holster set up but this works pretty nice.

ken k