superiority of sound?

[Lew]

Even modern instruments use different thicknesses of metal from horn to horn and maker to maker. My Cerveny seemed to have much thinner metal than my King. I'm not sure what impact this has on the sound though. Any metal is actually a crystaline structure which is harder and more brittle at the crystal borders and softer and more malleable within the crystals. "Working" metal tends to reduce the crystal size making it harder and more brittle, while heating it up will enlarge the crystals making it softer and more malleable. Both are done to the metal when forming it to make horns.

I tend to think that older horns have a different sound because a different alloy was used and the particular combination of metals can influence the way it vibrates. I don't pretend to know what, if any, difference older brass has on the sound a horn can produce. I do know that my Bill Bell model King, made in the 1930s, is about as heavy a horn as I have ever owned for its size, and it has great resonance.

[rascaljim]

IowegianStar:

Actually, when a instrument is hand made they tend to be much lighter than the horns that have been formed by hydraulics. The reason is because most of these horns have their tubes formed by 'expanding brass'. They actually take a brass rod and use pressure to expand it to the proper size. Because of the pressure, the tubes need to be thicker so they don't break while being formed.

For hand made horns, they do hand hammer and this actually doesn't require as thick a metal to form because of the lack of internal stress and pressures to form it.

The weight difference between a hand made tuba and one that isn't is very noticable in the weight of the horn. My miraphone 186 is noticibly heavier than my MW 2000, but my 2000 is a noticably larger tuba.

I also notice a ton more resonation through the tuba when i play the 2000 compared to the 186. My point of reference is i actually hear the tuba ring longer when i stop playing (fractions of a second I'm sure) and I can feel the horn vibrate much more.

Hope it helps clear some things up!
Jim Langenberg

[MaryAnn]

I'll give (again) my experience with french horn bells. I have a hand-made high-level french horn, that I bought used quite a few years ago. I bought it mainly because of the small grip that fit my hand so well; most other models of horn required gorilla paws to play.

It had a little bit of a tinny sound and I spent years messing with mouthpieces trying to fix the sound. It had a screw bell too, and the entire horn is/was unlacquered gold brass. I even tried a yellow brass bell with garland, from the same company, to see if that helped. It sounded a little brighter but no other difference was discernable to me.

Then a friend of mine wrote me and said he had seen a Lawson bell for sale that had the proper screw ring on it, and I should try it. (He plays on a Lawson horn, an American custom made.) So I sent off for the bell, and was astounded at the difference it made in the playability of my horn. This bell is hand-hammered ambronze. My horn no longer sounded tinny; it had a huge sound, and not only that but the notes all over the range suddenly locked in much, much better than they had before. I coughed up the $900 for the bell. While I was play testing it, there was a meeting of the horn club; several pro players tried my horn with my bell and the Lawson bell, and all of them said the same thing....wow, what a difference, buy this bell!!

Just last January another pro at a workshop tried my bell on his horn. His response? "It's a CANNON!" And it was obvious that the notes locked in better on his horn too; obvious to everyone who was listening to him attempt the same fast runs with either bell. His bell, he missed several notes; my bell, he hit them all. Over and over!!

The Lawson bell is considerably heavier than my old bell.

I don't know how much of the difference is due to the metal, the hand-hammering, the taper, or some unknown thing. I do know that I don't fiddle with mouthpieces any more, because I can just use one that makes it easier to play the horn (Lawson, again....) and that's that. If I ever have a problem with an istrument again, the bell will be the first place I go. The leadpipe will be the 2nd place I go.

MA

[windshieldbug]

One might guess that not only have manufacturing methods changed, but that metal formulation may have been a little more subjective in "days of yore". Metal density and composition (and therefore reaction to stimuli) as well as the process of building an entire horn may be more consistent now. You may get fewer "dogs" (most many happy buyer) now, but also fewer "gems".

[Chuck(G)]

IActually, when a instrument is hand made they tend to be much lighter than the horns that have been formed by hydraulics. The reason is because most of these horns have their tubes formed by 'expanding brass'. They actually take a brass rod and use pressure to expand it to the proper size. Because of the pressure, the tubes need to be thicker so they don't break while being formed.

Jim, I assume you're talking about the stock cylindrical brass tubes around the valveset, not the large branches (which are formed from sheet in any case).

Modern seamless brass tube manufacturing usually occurs in two stages; a rough shape is produced by an extrusion mill and then is usually shipped to a redraw mill, which gives the final dimension to the tubing. I can purchase tuba-sized stock seamless brass tube manufactured in this manner with wall thicknesses down to 0.010, considerably thinner than any used on tubas. As a matter of fact, I can purchase such tubing from my local hobby store, with wall thicknesses of 0.014--again, thinner than most of the tubing used on old or modern tubas.

Besides, handmade or not, don't all tuba manufacturers use commercial extruded and drawn seamless tube?

[corbasse]

In my experiences with antique french horns I've never come across a copy, however faithfully and skillfully made, which had the same playing qualities as a good original early 19th century instrument.
Something seems to be missing; a certain flexibility in getting the notes where you want them instead of where the horns puts them, a certain special quality in the sound, an evenness of tone despite all the stopping, pitch bending and other manipulating going on....
Maybe it's just the lack of straight even tubing that these instruments have as a result of old manufacturing methods and countless dents which have been repaired over and over and over?

[tubeast]

Working metal tends to reduce the crystal size making it harder and more brittle, while heating it up will enlarge the crystals making it softer and more malleable

Because of the pressure, the tubes need to be thicker so they don't break while being formed.

Sorry to be picky on this, but...
Metal is a cristalline material. That means there is a set of atoms arranged in a repetitive and well ordered structure.
All of us have seen models of those crystals in school, usually spheres connected by rods to a somewhat cubic or hexagonal shape. (There are many more shapes I don´t know the english terms of)
A lump of metal will consist of a huge amount of these basic crystals. You can envision all these crystals aligned, so they form grids and parallel planes.
As this structure usually isn´t perfect in nature, there are all kinds of gaps or surplus atoms scattered all over the material.
Maybe two planes will be seperated by a third stuck half way between them. These will stress the bonds between the regularly aligned atoms. If you imagine these bonds to be springs, you´ll see that deformed springs will create inner forces in the material, causing it to become more rigid.

So when we bend (plastically deform) a metal, a) the faulty spots in the crystals will move (resulting in the deformation)and b) additional faulty spots will be created, causing the material to get even stiffer.
Metal will take only so much deformation before it´ll be so stiff that it´ll break if you try to bend it further. You can try this on a paper clip.
Heating it to or above the temperature of recrystallisation will relieve the internal stress, as stretched bonds between atoms will break up and rebuild with other neighboring atoms that are energetically more favorable to connect to. After that you can go on bending, because the structure "healed" itself to a condition as if it hadn´t been bent at all.

[tubeast]

Mandrake,
you´re right, I should have mentioned that I was talking about a "model" of what people think what´s going on between atoms.
It´s just that when we think about things in terms of analogies, we tend to replace the "real thing" by the analogy languagewise. The longer and more frequent we do so, the more we tend to accept the analogy or model as what´s going on in reality.

So please read my post keeping that in mind.
I won´t go too deep into this and will leave the exact definitions and explanations to physicists, physical chemists and experts of metallurgy. As a mechanical engineer working with parts made of metal as opposed to a metallurgist working with elements that´ll form metals with specific properties, a general idea of what´s going on in a metal is good enough for me.

Now for the sea of electrons that is supposed to exist in a metal:
Think of it this way: some electrons that belong to a metal atom are rather loosely "tied" to that atom and can easily be seperated from it. So when atoms crowd together to form a metallic crystal, adjacent atoms are "persuaded" to "let go" of some of their electrons and "share" them with their neighbors.

Now, between atoms there will be an amount of electrons that "can´t make up their mind" which atom they belong to. This is referred to as a sea of electrons.

This is the point where my previous post started:
The atom rumps (ions that would need a couple of electrons to form an atom again) interact with that sea of electrons and each other, forming the crystal because that particular alignment represents a state of equilibrium of forces.

When atoms are pushed away from that "ideal position" in the crystal´s grid, (remember, the shape of that grid is a consequence of the atoms "wanting" to be in a certain distance from each other) that equilibrium is disrupted and forces try to rearrange that atom back where it belongs.
This keeps the metal as a solid below a certain temperature.
Heating a metal up will alter the energetic properties of a metal.
At some point it may become "beneficial" energetically that the grid change its shape, changing the metal´s properties.
(above a certain temperature, steel will cease to be attracted by a magnet, for example)

At some temperature, those bonds will loosen up all together, causing the metal to melt. Mercury would be an example of metals that will melt far below room temperature, but still it´s a metal.

Hope that helped a little.

Edit: I didn´t want to appear the wise guy, just wanted to point out certain things about reasons why manufacturers may or may not choose thick or thin material for their horns. Too much stress in a material due to large deformations didn´t seem a reason to increase wall thickness of a pipe to me.
This would be done if the part is supposed NOT TO undergo deformation at a given force.