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Well I found two horns in a basement and made a low ball offer. He sold them to me. There is a bit of work to be done, but they both play. First is a double belled euphonium. A Conn dating from 1911. It is in good shape. Needs internal cleaning and a valve alinement. One brace needs soldering. ChadTuba tested it and said it plays pretty good.


Second is an Eb Helicon. A Coutierre, imported by J.W. Pepper. It likely dates from 1893 or so. All the parts are there. The gooseneck need soldering and there are some stuck slides. Needs internal cleaning with new corks and felts. The bell has a small crack that need soldering. Pretty minor stuff.

Nice!

The five piston valves in that configuration is very interesting. What a find!

chronolith wrote:The five piston valves in that configuration is very interesting. What a find!

Finally, an instrument for me!



PS -- awesome finds!

bort wrote:

chronolith wrote:The five piston valves in that configuration is very interesting. What a find!

Finally, an instrument for me!



PS -- awesome finds!

Bort, I thought you only had 4 fingers on each hand:

I guess I look in all the wrong basements....either that or people in the Nebraska don't hoard brass instruments... Nice finds! I'd love to come across something like these someday!

You killed my father, prepare to die!

PMeuph wrote:Bort, I thought you only had 4 fingers on each hand:

Eew! Freakshow!

Ben wrote:You killed my father, prepare to die!

Unless your father lived in northern Minnesota for most of his life, then I doubt it. I hope you inherit something similar from him when he passes. Oh, and "bring it on!"

Congratulations--great additions!
Mark

Very good find. The euph is identical to mine, but yours is in much nicer shape cosmetically. They are pretty good players and when I compared it to modern euphs, it was considerably larger in bore and bell size than my Besson Sovereign. They really were euphs - not baritones. I love playing mine in church. (Fun to do the second verse of a hymn with the small bell.) Mine also has only the low pitch slide as it appears yours does too. It does have the HP/LP marks on the tuning slides. But as nice as it is, it is still a bit quirky. 1st valve middle C is very flat and the Eb in the clef is rather sharp and the low Bb rather flat. (I've noticed that on many vintage horns that 2nd harmonic is flat) The small bell actually has much better intonation - go figure that one. Cheers and best wishes.

I had Chadtuba test it. He said it was fun to play. He did mentioned that there are a few notes that were hard to tune and the small bell tuned better than the large bell. (Maybe he'll add a few comments about this horn.) I don't have a mouthpiece yet, but both Dave Werden and Chad suggested I get a 4AY, so I ordered one. I think it will be fun to mess with. Who knows, maybe I'll even be able to play it a bit.

opus37 wrote:I had Chadtuba test it. He said it was fun to play. He did mentioned that there are a few notes that were hard to tune and the small bell tuned better than the large bell. (Maybe he'll add a few comments about this horn.)

Overall this was a nice playing horn. The biggest problems I found were with the open partials, Bb and Bb, both were extremely flat. The other issues were minor and could be easily overcome with alternate fingerings. My thought, and hope, is that there might be a small leak or something stuck in the horn that could be easily fixed to make this a nice playing horn. I played it with one of the community bands that we both play in and had no problem fitting the horns sound in with the rest of the band.

opus37 wrote:

Ben wrote:You killed my father, prepare to die!

Unless your father lived in northern Minnesota for most of his life, then I doubt it. I hope you inherit something similar from him when he passes. Oh, and "bring it on!"

I was referring to the six-fingered man.

Great find! I wish we had basements in Florida so I could find something like that.