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Cutting Medium Ebs?

Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 11:07 am
by TheHatTuba
I know people have tried to cut monster ebs with bad results and small ebs with decent to great results. Has anyone tried cutting the medium ebs like this one:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~cderksen/Conn12J192ximage.html" target="_blank

Re: Cutting Medium Ebs?

Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 11:36 pm
by Bob Kolada
It seems that most of the horns that were actually -called- medium are just slightly bigger than the small. Example-
http://www.hnwhite.com/King/Low%20Brass ... 0Large.jpg
Mine seems to fall somewhere inbetween/elsewhere.

The 17ish" belled ones we would call a medium today seem to have the same problems as the giants. Dillon Music has a sweet looking front valve Conn but I'm told it has the wide octave. My Giant had a flat low Eb, extremely flat low D (Db and C were fine, C was a wonderful note on that horn, B was a ghost), very sharp Eb and D in the staff, slightly flat open G and Gb, and a very flat F. It had those issues with both a Bach 18 and contrabone/tweener mps. It had none of the other issues I would have associated with a too-big mp with the 18- playability and response were fantastic.

For vintage Eb to go with your Conn, don't bother with anything but a small horn. Look for a clean one with good partials, get some slide work done to it, and rock that bad boy out. A medium one (today's standards) would be too close and a giant would be the exact same thing with slightly worse intonation. I have spent a lot of time on a 56J and my old Giant Eb and the only difference in sound was the the 56J sounds a bit clearer, possibly due to lighter metal? The 56J has it's own intonation nightmares- sharp 4th partial and 5th partial being the big ones. Also, it has a super-cool-by-itself-but-stupid-compared-to-any-other-note-on-the-horn hyperactive low C. FML...