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Here we have a very small, very light Lyon and Healy Eb tuba, marked "Silver Piston" - what can you tell me about its age, rarity, etc? Takes a small shank mouthpiece to play even remotely in tune.



*sorry for the original bad upload job!

you may well have googled Lyon and Healy and found that they are a Chicago based manufacturer of harps and have been around for about 150 years, they may well have imported other instruments and just put their on label on them in the past

Looking at the Lyon & Healy catalogs at Horn-u-copia ( http://www.horn-u-copia.net/library.shtml" target="_blank" target="_blank )

I see L&H "Silver Piston" horns in the 1894 catalog ( https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5-_7UC ... sp=sharing )

and continued in the 1912 catalog ( http://brasstacks.de/ce_photo/html/imag ... ./../sound )

I have a horn that looks very much like that, although the lead pipe anchor is different. It is a "Beau Ideal" with "Chicago" engraved on it. It had very elaborate engraving and decorations. It uses a bass trombone size mouthpiece. I am not sure of the year, but I would guess it is from the early part of the last century. It is playable, but the valves are not very tight and some stupid "crafter" hit it with a grinding wheel to rough it up so she could paint it. It was free, so I took it, but too bad. It would need Dan Oberloh's touch to bring it back to a collector piece.

Steve

This tuba has a valve wrap similar to the French and British non-compensating Eb tubas from the transitional period between 1870, where all 3 valve loops were on the rear side, until maybe 1920 where all 3 valve valve loops were on the front side. This one has the 1st loop only on the front side, which to me would indicate a pre-1890 design.

Klaus