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I have seen different occasional discussions about the "best" bass trombone. Best often relates to jazz/commercial/orchestral, vintage/new, single/independent/dependent, yellow/red, etc. and can come up with 100 different horns for 100 different people, each one the "best " for them.

What, in your opinion, is the WORST bass trombone?

(If possible try to keep the politics of east Asian instruments out of this.)

This is easy. The guy who shows up to play the bass trombone part with a tenor trombone.

Not very specific, but anything with really small valves can back up on you in a big hurry.

I've owned several. Conn 70 and 72, King Duo Gravis, Bach 50B, Olds Roberts and my current horn, a Besson 943R. None of them are the worst. They all played good, different but good. The king was the brightest, closely followed by the Bach. The Besson the darkest, till you put the hammer down. The Conn 72 probably had the best overall sound but it was a beast to hold (10 1/2 inch heavy wall bell) and I had to give it up. The Besson is the best combination of sound, pitch and ergonomics, but none of these is bad in the least.

Tbn.al hits on something here that really says what you may be looking for without getting the direct answer. I have also played a wide range of the name brands and some of the Asian clones. Each have something I was looking for, but each also had a downfall that I could not address with simple answers.

Ergonomics hampered my playing ability over long periods of time due to older age, nerves tingling, and other physical issues with the weight of some horns. Others would back up on my air wise, no matter what mouthpiece/lead pipe combinations I tried.

In my case, the worst one I had was not due to the horn set up as such, it was the lack of proper plating and how the slide would corrode/wear down very quickly. It was a horn that came from south of the equator.

I had an old Holton that was awful. It made a great lamp, though….

Mark wrote:This is easy. The guy who shows up to play the bass trombone part with a tenor trombone.

+1
Mark

From my playing experience, I don't like the Bach Strad line of bass bones. I've played a number of them over the years and just don't like the way they sound and I cannot stand the ergonomics of them. I own a Jupiter 740L, which is a clone of the Conn 112H with better ergonomics. It sounds good and just seems to fit my hands perfectly so for the occasional playing I do, it is the perfect fit for me.

It has GOT to be the old Boosey & Hawkes G bass trombone that the orchestra manager of he Tasmanian Symphony dragged out and handed to me back about 74. That is the one with the handle so you can reach 7th position - no trigger. The bass bone player had resigned and they wanted me to fill the position. There was no permanent tuba position then. The second worst was the Bb "bass" Besson I managed to borrow. A rather beat up pos. which had been lying about in a band's store room for years. I was having to battle along with it when a certain Michael Mulchahy joined the orchestra. That meant the section could be filled out and I got do most of my work back on tuba.

I completely forgot about the old B&H POS. I'm not sure I even classify that as a Bass Trombone. The bore is about the same as my Olds pea shooter. They are truly horrible instruments.

CONN 50H....

1. the slide is too heavy, or the horn isn't well balanced.
2. 0.522 bore is too small for a bass, imho.

Now marketed as a Tenor, originally marketed as a bass...

http://cderksen.home.xs4all.nl/Conn50H1967image.html" target="_blank

I wonder if that's the Conn I bought from a pawn shop, back in the '80s. The woman I sold it to, eventually sold it on and couldn't remember what it was either. I didn't do very well with it. I guess the odds are it was a 72H, because all I really remember was that it just sucked the air out of me, and the smaller bore should maybe play more like a tenor.

My Reynolds 1-valve seems much easier, maybe that has something to do with changes in me the intervening decades, but it's sure ready to go with whatever I put in it, and it's light, too. Unbelievably light. I've weighed it with every scale in the house because no one believes.

windshieldbug wrote:

That's not the "worst" bass bone. If anything, it may qualify for the "first" bass bone.

That's a cimbasso, isn't it? Probably made to order for Verdi.

iiipopes wrote:

windshieldbug wrote:

That's not the "worst" bass bone. If anything, it may qualify for the "first" bass bone.

It couldn't be the first. It has valves. This one might not be the first but it is surely close.
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Yes, I had forgotten that there was a bass sackbut.

A tenor trombonist playing ANY instrument on the bass trombone part.

Bob Kolada wrote:A tenor trombonist playing ANY instrument on the bass trombone part.

With a 12C.

From an ergonomics standpoint, any dependant valved bass with the "Dual Thumb" trigger system.