Your idea has a couple of strong sides to it:
By principle the valve assembly of a Conn 22K is the same as the one of the Conn 20K. After all the latter is the industry standard from around high school level right into the graveyard. The 20K hardly is the best sousaphone ever made, but it very likely is the high end sousaphone produced in the largest numbers ever.
Weltklang has the benefit of its maker's production philosophies, that its body is made to the same hight standards as the higher end B&S instruments from the same house (give or take a few ferrule decorations and reinforced bow-guards). However the Weltklang valve transmission was mostly of an older and cheaper technological type.
So your idea of combining these two strong elements into a GDRUS monster is appealing. But rather tell of the pitfalls now, than sell you hankerchiefs, when you cryingly realise the failure of the project.
All more modern Conn sousaphones basically have the main bugle airpath following the direction of the clock.
Many, if not all, Weltklang sousaphones have the outlay of the Herculesophone patented in tsarist Russia before 1870.
Much of the medium large parts of the bore are in front of the player, whereas the inner main circle may be of a smaller bore and maybe worse: the airpath there sometimes moves counter the clock.
Even if airpath directions and bores should match for a structurally sound attachment of the body and the valve assembly, then there still are problems to be considered:
Whitch pitch will the brass combinatorics end up in? In AAb or as the so much sought after CC circlophonium?
And then there is the whole difference in material concepts between the heavy Conn parts and the much lighter brass sheets out of GDR. Will the combined efforts sound overblown, when played Conn 20K style, or will they sound deadly dull, when blown more lightly?
Recent on-board threads have displayed samples of linkage revisions pro as well as amateur style. Either of these may after all end up preferable as well musically as with respect to das Kapital.
Carolus Marximus Conservatismus
Fat Helicon Construction Ahead......
-
KarlMarx
- bugler
- Posts: 161
- Joined: Fri Jan 28, 2005 7:51 am
- Location: Eye candy
A few more considerations:
The tsarist notion and instrument name actually are true. The maker resided in Odessa in Ukraine, but his name will not let itself surfase right now. Stowasser? At least that family operated in a number of countries.
The problem with the "wrong" airpath direction is, that you cannot just turn the air within a certain portion of tubing as your new layout may se fit. The gradual expansion of the bore follows the direction of the airpath. That piece of tubing has to be unsoldered, the residual solder material has to be scraped off, as the tubing has to be turned 180° before it is resoldered. Even if you are careful enough to avoid the need for extra dent work, then alone this part of the process will tear quite a few pages out of your personal sample of Das Kapital.
And then there is the really big question: How will the whole project end up being in tune just alone with it self? Unlike the CC helicon project recently reported on by Joseph Sellmansberger of Memphis you have no chance to tell until the final soldering has been finished. You may take your changes by taping together parts during the process just to make some playing tests.
In the bigger picture your process resembles prototype development work in older European brass houses: take some known parts and reshuffle them. However you have a low number of given parts, so that needs for additional crooks and bows will be costly.
The really sad aspects of your project is, that if it fails, then you are out of your Weltklang helicon.
If you post photos of the Weltklang, a lot of experienced posters will be able to analyse the airpath for you.
Carolus Marximus Conservatissimus
The tsarist notion and instrument name actually are true. The maker resided in Odessa in Ukraine, but his name will not let itself surfase right now. Stowasser? At least that family operated in a number of countries.
The problem with the "wrong" airpath direction is, that you cannot just turn the air within a certain portion of tubing as your new layout may se fit. The gradual expansion of the bore follows the direction of the airpath. That piece of tubing has to be unsoldered, the residual solder material has to be scraped off, as the tubing has to be turned 180° before it is resoldered. Even if you are careful enough to avoid the need for extra dent work, then alone this part of the process will tear quite a few pages out of your personal sample of Das Kapital.
And then there is the really big question: How will the whole project end up being in tune just alone with it self? Unlike the CC helicon project recently reported on by Joseph Sellmansberger of Memphis you have no chance to tell until the final soldering has been finished. You may take your changes by taping together parts during the process just to make some playing tests.
In the bigger picture your process resembles prototype development work in older European brass houses: take some known parts and reshuffle them. However you have a low number of given parts, so that needs for additional crooks and bows will be costly.
The really sad aspects of your project is, that if it fails, then you are out of your Weltklang helicon.
If you post photos of the Weltklang, a lot of experienced posters will be able to analyse the airpath for you.
Carolus Marximus Conservatissimus
Last edited by KarlMarx on Sun Apr 03, 2005 8:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
-
Steve Marcus
- pro musician
- Posts: 1843
- Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2004 12:18 am
- Location: Chicago area
- Contact:
-
Chuck(G)
- 6 valves
- Posts: 5679
- Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2004 12:48 am
- Location: Not out of the woods yet.
- Contact:
-
KarlMarx
- bugler
- Posts: 161
- Joined: Fri Jan 28, 2005 7:51 am
- Location: Eye candy
Thanks to Chuck, who after all is a seasoned operator, when it comes to the rescue of dogs, I found this:Chuck(G) wrote:Josef Josefovich Schediwa (1853-1915),
http://www.tuba.org.ru/int.php
Sorry about placing the Herculesophone 15 or 20 years too early in the timeline. But then my ghostwriter Friedrich never was a real angel:
The illustration on top of this posting most likely shows a Herculesophone in Eb, so that it doesn't really support my point of the frequent against-the-clock airpaths often seen in German BBb helicons. However photos are to be had from the right places.
As for my favourite circlophoniums: they once belonged to Dale Hale, the resident comic stripper of this forum. Sadly I hadn't capitalised enough on Das Kapital to afford Dale's collection, which he only would sell off unbroken.
And with this huge tombstone on top of me, that collection wouldn't have stayed unbroken for very long anyway.
And then I never will know, when a wall comes down on me. It was Berlin in 1989:
It might be China next week:
Carolus Marximus Expectandimus
