"Royal" Eb Tuba - has anyone heard of it?

[Jervin22000]

Trying out an old three valve Eb tuba. The only markings are a serial number and a bell engraving with the word "ROYAL". The receiver seems to be a Euro euphonium shank, and it's a small horn. My Schilke 59 bass bone mouthpiece only goes in about half a centimeter but seems to work OK.

I'm thinking about buying it for $100 for a project horn, but haven't been able to find any info online about it.Has anyone heard of these?

Thanks!

[imperialbari]

Unless referring to a specific royal house the term of ‘Royal’ is not trademarked. So what I tell below here may not necessarily have relevance for the instrument in question.

I. K. Gottfried of Copenhagen was, except for a few later attempts, the last company in Denmark to build brass instruments. The production of valved brass instruments stopped around 1943, when materials became scarce and when the Markneukirchen suppliers of valves ceased production, all due to WWII. After the war only the production of lur replicas continued until around 1983.

However I. K. Gottfried continued selling Markneukirchen-made instruments under their housebrands of first ‘Forza’ (mostly rotary instruments of a quality level known from the Weltklang second line from B&S) and later on ‘Royal’ (mostly piston instruments of the Weltklang quality level - the same instruments were known as ‘bles’ in Norway).

Your instrument fits the specs that I remember loosely from 45 years ago, if it is a piston instrument. I would say that there are two parameters to watch for. GDR based makers never really came to making good pistons. And their smallish piston Eb tubas need very shallow mouthpieces to get the pitch useable.

Klaus

[Jervin22000]

Hi Klaus, thank you for the information! I'm assuming Weltklang-line instruments were student models? Were the Piston "Royal" horns you're referring to built by B&S?

I'll try to upload pictures later of the horn and the engraving.

[windshieldbug]

Horn-u-copia's tradename listing has an entry under Royal for the Czech. Mus. Co. for c.1930.
http://www.horn-u-copia.net/pubtrade.ph ... 5)="Royal"

I don't know any more than that.

[imperialbari]

Weltklang (meaning Sound of the World) was the factory name for the 2nd line of B&S. In many cases the same acoustic designs as the top line instruments marked B&S, but with fewer valves and with the old style S-links when rotors. The assembly was done by apprentices and journeymen (4 years of training) rather than by master craftsmen (12 years of training/education).

As a result of the shared acoustic designs, it was possible to find very lucky samples of the Weltklang rotor instruments. I never liked their piston instruments, neither B&S nor Weltklang. These designs did not come out of the German tradition. Maybe they were copies of low end French-Belgian-Dutch low brasses that never appealed to me either.

Another possible source for the Royal instruments is Amati, which had a quite similar approach to designs and models as the one of B&S.

At the given price you can’t harm yourself much, but don’t expect getting something really useful.

Klaus