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Hello all,

I've heard of garlands being called "tone rings", just out of curiosity how do they change the tone? Personally If I were to have a tuba built bespoke I'd have a tone ring put on mine purely because of the aesthetic details (in short, they look nice!)

I've heard that in theory, the kranz helps keep the sound from "breaking up" at high volumes or when it's really pushed (the idea is that there's some extra mass there at the end of the bell). I've also heard that old-school manufacturing techniques had something to do with it.

I'm not sure how much difference it really makes, but I think it looks awfully cool.

bort wrote:I've heard that in theory, the kranz helps keep the sound from "breaking up" at high volumes

That is what I have heard too.

Is not a 'tone ring' something completely different? A heavy ring inside the bell to deaden vibrations (was once installed in MW 2165)

Tone rings and garlands are not the same thing. A garland is just another way to fasten the rim wire to the bell instead of rolling the wire inside the bell rim. A tone ring is a gadget that is soldered down inside the bell that has been used by some manufacturers supposedly to darken the sound or rid the bell of and acoustic 'ring'.

And yes.... I've replace a couple of dozen Miraphone bells with ones with a rolled wire rim instead of a garland. The results are good.

KiltieTuba wrote:I thought the whole point of the kranz was to strengthen the outer reaches of the bell - back when bells were made of two pieces, the main sheet and an extra triangular part to fill in the gap.

Indeed, older bells in either one piece or with the insert (rather than two complete cones), when spun, resulted in a rasor-thin rim. The wreath/kranz was used to provide structural assistance to the bell and host the wire, whether soldered on or rolled into the wreath.

In the past, this wreath was not soldered on, but more often now, they are. The greatest change in Miraphones and Alexanders, IMHO, is not the bell diameter change but the use of solder on on the inside edge of the wreath.

YMMV/YOMV.

J.c.S.

So in theory I take it the wreath was designed to change the sound of the instrument yet 99% of people can't hear it? I was also under the assumption that all tuba bells were as thick as the British Besson Sovereigns, my bad.

RanmaSyaoran wrote:I was also under the assumption that all tuba bells were as thick as the British Besson Sovereigns, my bad.

No, the thickness of metal varies according to manufacture and how made and when. I believe even the metal thickness on Sovereign varies according to age.

I always thought the tone ring / garland (ok they aren't the same thing) was to keep the darn bell from ringing after the player has stopped the note. Rudy Meinls used to come with plastic tubing positioned around the bell edge to stop the ringing. I have not played a ton of horns with garlands, so I'm not sure if they actually do stop the "whang whang" sound after the note ends.

fairweathertuba wrote:Rudy Meinls used to come with plastic tubing positioned around the bell edge to stop the ringing.

Those are just to protect the bell from damage when you stand tuba on bell. I have never known a tuba that rings after you stop playing

fairweathertuba wrote:I always thought the tone ring / garland (ok they aren't the same thing) was to keep the darn bell from ringing after the player has stopped the note. Rudy Meinls used to come with plastic tubing positioned around the bell edge to stop the ringing. I have not played a ton of horns with garlands, so I'm not sure if they actually do stop the "whang whang" sound after the note ends.

I guarantee the wreath doesn't keep a bell from ringing... my old 164 Alex used to ring like CRAZY on Ebs and Abs... had to keep my arm against the bell. Later, when I returned the leadpipe to its original, soldered to the bell, position, it was cured.

J.c.S.

Neptune wrote:

fairweathertuba wrote:Rudy Meinls used to come with plastic tubing positioned around the bell edge to stop the ringing.

Those are just to protect the bell from damage when you stand tuba on bell. I have never known a tuba that rings after you stop playing

Remember playing that 48K at Pentwater two years ago? I guess you couldn't hear the 'ringing' for all the other racket going on! THAT sousa continues to 'ring' for several seconds after some notes. That can be cures by putting a piece of split vinyl tubing around the bell rim.

Neptune wrote:

fairweathertuba wrote:Rudy Meinls used to come with plastic tubing positioned around the bell edge to stop the ringing.

Those are just to protect the bell from damage when you stand tuba on bell. I have never known a tuba that rings after you stop playing

Oh, I used to take the plastic off, then set the horn bell down in a pile of gravel. Rudy Meinls are so tough they don't need no stinkin plastic~!!

J.c. Sherman wrote:Indeed, older bells in either one piece or with the insert (rather than two complete cones), when spun, resulted in a rasor-thin rim.

Spun bells have razor-thin rims? Are you really sure about that?

Klaus

the purpose of the kranz is to compensate for the thinning og the metal on the bell during spinning. it is not for tone or reinforcement per se.

A spun bell is made from a circular brass desk spun over a mandrel. The rim keeps its thickness, while the material gets thinner towards the throat.

German/Czech bells used to be cut from one piece of brass and hammered to shape after the brazing of the seam. The hammering process lead to the very thin material toward the rim edge.

Gussets were not much used din German brass making, even if Alexander horn bell for a period came with bell gussets.

The gussets were widely used in British brass instruments’ making. The purpose was about avoiding the rim area getting too thin.

Therefor we rarely, if ever, see a gusset and a garland in the same bell.

The Kranz/garland has the dual purpose of structural stiffening and acoustical stability against the sound breaking up in louder dynamics. One horn authority tells that the breaking up comes later in a crescendo in a horn with a Kranz, but it also comes more suddenly and uncontrollable.

Klaus

fairweathertuba wrote:I always thought the tone ring / garland (ok they aren't the same thing) was to keep the darn bell from ringing after the player has stopped the note. Rudy Meinls used to come with plastic tubing positioned around the bell edge to stop the ringing. I have not played a ton of horns with garlands, so I'm not sure if they actually do stop the "whang whang" sound after the note ends.

Having hammered, hand formed, and spun bells, they are, yes (if the original form is cut in a certain way). Certain cuts can reduce this effect. And all rims work to counter the bell work with various rim reinforcements. But when you compress the metal against the mandrel, it will thin... in certain cases to something which quite successfully sliced the crap out of the palm of my hand, leaving a blood trail all the way to the bathroom!

imperialbari wrote:A spun bell is made from a circular brass desk spun over a mandrel. The rim keeps its thickness, while the material gets thinner towards the throat.

German/Czech bells used to be cut from one piece of brass and hammered to shape after the brazing of the seam. The hammering process lead to the very thin material toward the rim edge.

Gussets were not much used din German brass making, even if Alexander horn bell for a period came with bell gussets.

The gussets were widely used in British brass instruments’ making. The purpose was about avoiding the rim area getting too thin.

Therefor we rarely, if ever, see a gusset and a garland in the same bell.

The Kranz/garland has the dual purpose of structural stiffening and acoustical stability against the sound breaking up in louder dynamics. One horn authority tells that the breaking up comes later in a crescendo in a horn with a Kranz, but it also comes more suddenly and uncontrollable.

Klaus

There are many ways of making a bell. Some bells are formed from two complete cones, or a cone and a disk - silver soldered together and then formed to the mandrel. In that case, the perturbations in bell thickness are substantially obviated, but not entirely.

The history of the wreath and the current use are different now, as I mentioned earlier. A gusset on my Alex was fit to an otherwise one-piece bell... my Besson was 2. A very different result from these two. And you are right about differences in the acoustics... I've played two Alex Fs purchased at the same time by the same guy, one with and one without wreath. Very different (but still classic!) sounds. I've also played side by side soldered and unsoldered wreaths, and the effects are much as you described for the latter. Unsoldered... the effect is magical, even and resonant as heck! Soldered, it holds together, but the resonance was not as interesting to me, and the crescendo less even.

J.c.S.

imperialbari wrote:...
Therefor we rarely, if ever, see a gusset and a garland in the same bell.
...

Maybe not on tuba, but I've seen many, many dozens of historical french horns with both a garland and a gusset. My Courtois, which I sold a few weeks ago, even had 2 gussets and a garland

A real garland of a separate sheet of metal?

Not a French rim, which looks like a narrow garland, but which really is the rim bent back over itself? This makes gussets understand able, as the material still needs some thickness.

Klaus

imperialbari wrote:A real garland of a separate sheet of metal?

Yes.

A garland was the standard finishing method of early brasses before the industrial revolution. Sheets of brass were cut in a Y shape, folded, brazed and hammered over a mandrel, then a garland was fitted tightly (not soldered!) over the edge of the bell. From the industrial revolution onwards they started spinning the folded sheets on the mandrel instead of hammering them. Spinning the bell from a flat sheet as is normal now is a much later development still.

Gussets were added not only to prevent too much stretching of the edge during the hammering (a lot of fine baroque instruments have virtually the same thickness throughout the whole of the bell), but also because the brass sheets produced at the time were in the form of strips, not always wide enough to get the circumference needed for a larger bell.

In horn building this ancient method continued to be used for a long time, not surprisingly especially in those parts where the natural horn was still going strong despite the invention and widespread use of the valve.

An entertaining book in this respect is "The Art Of the Trumpet Maker" by Robert Barclay. It gives a good overview of brass instrument production in the late renaissance and baroque. It also has lots of photos and hands-on instructions for the budding DIY natural trumpet builder