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the elephant wrote:The tremendous outlay of cash needed to tool up and then do prototyping would *never* be made up by sales of horns. No one will every do this unless they are a master builder setting up their own shop for the very first time with all new equipment and tools. I know of no master builders who do not already own a full shop of tools, and not many have the needed engineering and computer backgrounds needed for such work. It would have to initially be a labor of love, and these guys want to eat and to wear underwear devoid of holes and stains. So: nope.

Just to tool up a small but "complete" shop for one guy who does both woodwind and brass repair would currently run you over $30,000 if you start from scratch. The brass stuff is over $20,000 and the WW stuff prices out at about $10,000. The mills, lathes and CAD gear needed to make good valves and then research and tweak the designs until you are really happy with what you have are a good bit more than that. Working in different metals requires different techniques and tools; even more money.

It is a financial pit to stray far from the established path of "this works well" as funded and researched by large companies like Conn did in the middle of the 20th century. They were massively large for what we do, and they paid for and performed tons of acoustical and materials research that everyone feeds off of today, whether they know it or not. It would take a company like that to roll out something like stainless or aluminum casing sets with pistons that do not suffer from galvanic corrosion or whatever.

Yeah, you could do this, but it is not a financially inviting proposition for any company looking to make a buck over any other consideration, such as today's companies. Research is mostly out. Copying is in. Budget, budget, budget!