TubeNet

I was wondering if anyone has made a contrabass trombone themselves. Would it be as "easy" as trowing together a few junker trombones and baritones? How much would you charge to make it? Idk this idea has always interested me in would be a cheaper route to do this rather than get one from wessex (plus it would have that "homemade character" ).

KiltieTuba wrote: The problem you're going to run into is the slide itself. You can get an F contra (technically an F bass) slide from Kanstul or Rath, or any of the other F makers.

The obvious solution would be to make a double slide:

Use a regular bass trombone slide...(leave the slide section unmodified)...and fuddle with the bell, length of the bell section, and number of rotors...there will only be 3 or 4 "slide positions"...but with a few rotors, should be able to play chromatic scale...

Bass trombones and contrabass trombones share as many parts as do euphoniums and F tubas. That means nearly none. This fact might lead to some difficulty in conversion. It has been done, and it can be done again. It is not inexpensive.

There are F bass trombones and there are F contrabass trombones. To call one the other is to not be friends with the trombone. One would not call a euphonium a baritone. It's right out. Trombone rotors are more like change valves on the double French horn. A good trombone will play as well on one side of its doubleness as on the other. That leads to naming the voice of that trombone based upon what range it's designed to play, rather than upon its open bugle length. A good bass trombone plays as well in F and D as in Bb, so it's a Bb (F/D) bass. But this Bb/F/D bass trombone is no less than a G or F bass trombone. In fact, it's better. It's like having a triple French horn available for your honkage. A good F contrabass trombone also plays well in CC and AA and down into the meaty range of a BBb contrabass trombone. The F instrument has little difference from a CC trombone with an ascending valve. Except for the ascending valve. Because that's what it is. The change rotor lets you play also in F instead of CC most of the time, and that is much more a pleasure. A Thein F contrabass is likely tuned to F/D/BBb/AAb. The F/Bb is the change valve. The D is like the "extension handle valve". What is the German word for that handle?

On the askance of Jeff Reynolds, Larry Minick made a few contrabass trombones. At the time, there were few oversize components available. They considered a contrabass in F, but given the bore and slide length constraints, they decided to pitch it in G. The components they had were a better match for their horn-stretching project if pitched in G instead of F. Though short in open bugle, this was to be a G contrabass trombone, a new instrument, not a G bass trombone, a historical instrument. Minick also made several BBb contrabass trombones.

The first G model was made from a Holton double valve bass trombone. Minick used the hand slide, rotor section rebuilt with longer loops, a long custom neckpipe, the Holton tuning slide, a long custom bell tail, and the Holton bell flare. It looks like a bass trombone slide attached to a modern F contrabass bell section. You get 6 positions on a standard length bass trombone slide. These are pretty rare, but I believe more than a handful were made. I own one of Mr. Reynolds' castoffs. Someday I will take a better picture.

Minick G contrabass trombone with valves to Eb/D/BB



How can one make a G contrabasse in a modern way?
1. any inline double rotor bass trombone, dual bore slide preferred
2. Kanstul F contrabass bell <--this is your savior
3. custom long neckpipe (mostly cylindrical)
4. extra tubing to lengthen valve loops
5. a hand rest
6. really big trombone stand
6. 30mm mouthpiece
7. paper bag to carry it home

This would be very cool and I request that you do it and show us photos. But it would not be cheap. For not much more, you could just buy something. Idea: Some enterprising person could make a Shires bass-to-G-contrabass conversion kit. Include one of these Kanstul F bells with the right mounting hardware, a long neckpipe with the modular fittings, some long F and D rotor crooks, and a Shires owner could plug his existing components together to make a monster.

An F bass trombone is less of all that. These are as likely to be straight trombones as to have a rotor. An F bass might be like a longened Conn 8H type horn, or a longerated King 2B size instrument. They may have an extension handle on the slide. Again, I wish I could remember the German word for that. These F or G basses are easy to make with a big enough hammer. There are some writings online about them. Shires has experimented with F and G bass conversion kits using a standard Bb bass bell. Here is a historical F bass:



See Doug Yeo's website for some info on G and F bass trombones, and photos of a custom F bass that Yamaha made for him. Good luck!

F

tuben wrote: Great post! So who can explain why valve trombones and slide trombones sound so different?

https://iwk.mdw.ac.at/?page_id=87&sprache=2" target="_blank

KiltieTuba wrote: This is not accurate at all.

Yep. No need to make this sound more mysterious than it is.

KiltieTuba wrote:The bass trombone is essentially a large tenor, both are in Bb. In much the same way that a 3/4 BBb is the same pitch as a 6/4 BBb... So this F contrabass is mislabeled and would be considered a bass.

Trombones are not like tubas. It is as Ferguson says, there are F bass trombones and F contrabass trombones. It isn't about length, the way it is with tubas.

Bloke I get what you mean, but some of the "franken tubas" I see on here are very impressive. I just mean can something be made that doesn't necessarily look polished like its right off the assembly line, but something that works and could look kinda mismatched.

I interpret 'blown through... have been crap' to mean that they play like crap. If that's the case, who cares what it looks like?

Chasetbr wrote:Bloke I get what you mean, but some of the "franken tubas" I see on here are very impressive. I just mean can something be made that doesn't necessarily look polished like its right off the assembly line, but something that works and could look kinda mismatched.

KiltieTuba wrote:There's a contra (technically a bass)
http://www.mimo-db.eu/MIMO/infodoc/ged/ ... 0683_18414

I wouldn't want to sit behind that one!

KiltieTuba wrote:The bass trombone is essentially a large tenor, both are in Bb. In much the same way that a 3/4 BBb is the same pitch as a 6/4 BBb... So this F contrabass is mislabeled and would be considered a bass. Then the CC and BBb contras are just that - contrabass.

The same can be said of the bass trumpet... It's not a bass instrument it's a tenor. So the famous F contrabass is actually a bass trumpet in F below the tenor Bb.

If not, then any large instrument can be called something it's not - a 6/4 should then be called a subbass (or subcontrabass) just because it's bore and parts are bigger.



This is not accurate at all.

Good post. Accurate.

Ace

KiltieTuba wrote:Here, let's review:
The trumpet in Bb or C is a soprano instrument, followed by the Alto in Eb or F, then the Tenor in Bb or C, an finally the Bass in F or Eb.
Wagner tubas - Bb and BASS F
Tubas - Bb Tenor (which would be the Baritone and larger bore Euphonium), Bass F or Eb, contrabass BBb or CC, subbass EEb, subcontrabass BBBb or CCC.

Remember the baritone is technically a tenor instrument, while the euphonium is a larger bore instrument than the Baritone, it is still a tenor.

There are a couple of things going on here.

• To start with, these terms have no technical meaning. The first instrument I ever bought was a bass recorder, the compass of which goes about as low as an oboe. It's a bass recorder because it's a recorder, and that's where the bass is in the recorder scheme of things. Wagner tubas don't enter into the picture. Same goes for bass trumpet.
• If there's any absolute reference, there's a degree of overlap between human voice ranges and a sort of loose functional specialization in instruments. Bass and contrabass instruments tend to take rhythm and primary harmonic support, tenors interior parts. But it's real easy for an instrument to go either way. Trombone, violoncello, etc. can be tenor or bass. Euphonium is commonly used as a bass in small folk dance combos in Europe, works fine.
• The examples you cite are not trombones. Bass trombone can go into the contrabass range, because its cylindrical construction makes that extended length essentially the same trombone. That isn't like your examples, which if extended to twice their natural length are functionally compromised because of 1) valves, and 2) conical profile.

KiltieTuba wrote:Donn - explain this then:

Why is it that a bass trombone and tenor trombone are the same length? How is it that a peashooter Bb tenor produces the same range as a modern bass trombone?

They don't produce the same range. Bass trombones in Bb/F are optimized to play low. They use nearly all the same parts as an F bass trombone, except the 3 feet difference in straight tubing can go in and out of use via the rotor. It's a double trombone. It's an F trombone that also plays in Bb, but not as well as a tenor trombone plays in Bb.

F

KiltieTuba wrote:the bass F is not a contrabass no matter how you look at it.

Correct. They are different instruments, designed to do different things. Contrabasses also come in F with rotors to BBb and AAb. They are different than F bass trombones. But you have to consider the change valves because they are used differently than tuba valves are. It's more like a having a double tuba in F/CC.

F

KiltieTuba wrote:Further those conical bore tubas from Courtois (?) had conical tubing through the valves, would this then follow your explanation?

No. There's no way a conical profile can be significantly extended with any kind of valve or slide, without some significant degree of compromise.

Don't gloss over what Ferguson said there: "except the 3 feet difference in straight tubing can go in and out of use via the rotor." The trombone can get its length anywhere you want. I suspect trombone players don't ever use the term "open bugle." The trombone has one, I guess, but it's somewhat immaterial.

What about an F tuba vs an French horn. Same length of tubing (or close enough), same partials....

Same instrument?..... I don't think so....

Further, one could contend, as I believe Ferguson is doing, that a tenor trombone and bass trombone are two different instruments. It's a slightly harder sale than French horn vs tuba as the bass trombone isn't really that different than certain tenors...(If you look around, there are european 0.562 tenors with 9 inch bells, something to rival quite a few modern bass trombones...) You can also get a large bore slide and bell for a Conn 88h. Making it really an in-betweener but also making the whole "optimized" argument a tad weaker...

So, If we use that logic, the only bass trombones should be in G or in F...

_____
I was on a gig with a really good bass trombonist this weekend. He was playing a 0.547 closed wrap Conn 88H with a Bach 1.5 G mouthpiece (or something of that sort). What came out of the horn and what I was expecting from looking at the horn(having not noticed the mouthpiece) were two different things. There was no way he was playing a tenor trombone...He was just rocking anything below the staff. Forget the claims of one instrument "optimized," I've heard players with $7k custom bass bones who had nothing on this guy....
____

YMWCV....

Clearly, bass trombone as it's used today is a bastardization, and refers more to the range it generally inhabits. Is it an oversize tenor with an extra valve? Sure, but that's not what it was designed to be, or how it's unique features are used. At the end of the day, though, it's all about what comes out of the bell.

Consider the Yamaha YSL-350C, which has an ascending valve. The shortest path through the horn, with the valve held closed, would make it a "C" instrument, but if the slide is long enough to manage a B while the valve is open, then I'd make it a "Bb" instrument. Yet I doubt that the Kanstul F trombone can reach an E on the slide. It's easy to say a trombone is C, or Bb or F or whatever - but it just doesn't make that much difference.