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Christmas night, after much too much alcohol, I decided to purchase a mystery soviet Eb Helicon from a Ukrainian dealer on Ebay. After sobering up the next morning, I realised I had no idea about the provenance of this instrument.

While I await it's arrival, what do you chaps make of it? It looks to be in decent nick considering how much I paid for it, bit of sloppy soldering here and there, but most of the slides move and the seller assures me the valves work fine. Might have picked myself up a bargain

s-l1600-6 by Xenol, on Flickr

s-l1600-8 by Xenol, on Flickr

s-l1600-7 by Xenol, on Flickr

Screen Shot 2018-12-27 at 15.05.56 by Xenol, on Flickr

I've bought from this seller before. He's reliable and does a great packing job. I've got the Bb helicon he was selling on its way. Interested to see what it's like when it arrives but for the price I'm not going to complain much. That's a nice looking little helicon. I think you got a bargain even if you have to do a little work on it.

Thanks for the reply, I look forward to seeing how the Bb turns out for you! I'm quite excited really, would make standing/marching jobs with the band so much more comfortable if she's a runner.

If the intonation works for you but the ergonomics don't, it might not be too hard to move things around a little. I mean, not that I could do it, but I understand that there are people who know how to work with tubing like that to reroute the leadpipe and maybe move the valves out a little. I had a Czech Eb that was a little awkward for me, very awkward for its previous owner. Will be very interested to hear how it plays.

With the logo, it could have been made in the Kiev Radio Factory. Yes, they made musical instruments. I have a 3-rotor oval baritone that the Cyrillic translates to that.

bloke wrote:question:
Was this instrument shortened to C ?

Looks more like it was in CC and lengthened to BBb.....

I expect I'm missing the joke here, but as Xenol says, it's a full circle Eb. Fat tuba for a skinny player.

iiipopes wrote:With the logo, it could have been made in the Kiev Radio Factory. Yes, they made musical instruments. I have a 3-rotor oval baritone that the Cyrillic translates to that.

Interesting! Thanks for the info.

Hope to enter the fray, here. I have also gotten in on the online sale of soviet helicons. Mine is at Baltimore Brass hopefully getting repaired from extensive shipping damage (not worth the effort to try to get money from the shipper). Looking at this site and others with relevant information, it seems to be from 1964 (which for that year had the year in the serial #), from Leningrad (although it was shipped from owner in Kiev), nickel plated, and the tech assured me it was probably not a quality horn (which was ok, I just bought it for TubaChristmas and other standing-while-playing things). But I post here because I have not seen online anywhere the logo on my horn, and I was wondering of anyone could provide information.