Hello All,
A good friend of mine gave me an interesting old horn yesterday which turns out to be a Moses Slater Eb helicon. The instrument has an 11 and 1/4" bell and a bore size of about .565" or so, (all slides are frozen so I measured a valve port and estimanted from there). It's pretty close to modern pitch and takes a small shank tuba mouthpiece. The company sold instruments in New York City from 1865 until about 1920, (although Slater himself died in 1899). He apparently teamed up with Gottfried Martin from 1868 until 1874 with instruments marked as either Slater and Martin or Martin and Slater. I believe that this one is a later example since it has a five-digit serial number and it seems that most Slater instruments have a four-digit number.
Here are some photos:
Adjunct Tuba Professor
William Paterson University
Wayne, NJ
