Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 7:56 pm
Your idea has a couple of strong sides to it:
By principle the valve assembly of a Conn 22K is the same as the one of the Conn 20K. After all the latter is the industry standard from around high school level right into the graveyard. The 20K hardly is the best sousaphone ever made, but it very likely is the high end sousaphone produced in the largest numbers ever.
Weltklang has the benefit of its maker's production philosophies, that its body is made to the same hight standards as the higher end B&S instruments from the same house (give or take a few ferrule decorations and reinforced bow-guards). However the Weltklang valve transmission was mostly of an older and cheaper technological type.
So your idea of combining these two strong elements into a GDRUS monster is appealing. But rather tell of the pitfalls now, than sell you hankerchiefs, when you cryingly realise the failure of the project.
All more modern Conn sousaphones basically have the main bugle airpath following the direction of the clock.
Many, if not all, Weltklang sousaphones have the outlay of the Herculesophone patented in tsarist Russia before 1870.
Much of the medium large parts of the bore are in front of the player, whereas the inner main circle may be of a smaller bore and maybe worse: the airpath there sometimes moves counter the clock.
Even if airpath directions and bores should match for a structurally sound attachment of the body and the valve assembly, then there still are problems to be considered:
Whitch pitch will the brass combinatorics end up in? In AAb or as the so much sought after CC circlophonium?
And then there is the whole difference in material concepts between the heavy Conn parts and the much lighter brass sheets out of GDR. Will the combined efforts sound overblown, when played Conn 20K style, or will they sound deadly dull, when blown more lightly?
Recent on-board threads have displayed samples of linkage revisions pro as well as amateur style. Either of these may after all end up preferable as well musically as with respect to das Kapital.
Carolus Marximus Conservatismus
By principle the valve assembly of a Conn 22K is the same as the one of the Conn 20K. After all the latter is the industry standard from around high school level right into the graveyard. The 20K hardly is the best sousaphone ever made, but it very likely is the high end sousaphone produced in the largest numbers ever.
Weltklang has the benefit of its maker's production philosophies, that its body is made to the same hight standards as the higher end B&S instruments from the same house (give or take a few ferrule decorations and reinforced bow-guards). However the Weltklang valve transmission was mostly of an older and cheaper technological type.
So your idea of combining these two strong elements into a GDRUS monster is appealing. But rather tell of the pitfalls now, than sell you hankerchiefs, when you cryingly realise the failure of the project.
All more modern Conn sousaphones basically have the main bugle airpath following the direction of the clock.
Many, if not all, Weltklang sousaphones have the outlay of the Herculesophone patented in tsarist Russia before 1870.
Much of the medium large parts of the bore are in front of the player, whereas the inner main circle may be of a smaller bore and maybe worse: the airpath there sometimes moves counter the clock.
Even if airpath directions and bores should match for a structurally sound attachment of the body and the valve assembly, then there still are problems to be considered:
Whitch pitch will the brass combinatorics end up in? In AAb or as the so much sought after CC circlophonium?
And then there is the whole difference in material concepts between the heavy Conn parts and the much lighter brass sheets out of GDR. Will the combined efforts sound overblown, when played Conn 20K style, or will they sound deadly dull, when blown more lightly?
Recent on-board threads have displayed samples of linkage revisions pro as well as amateur style. Either of these may after all end up preferable as well musically as with respect to das Kapital.
Carolus Marximus Conservatismus
