New Bb design soon!
Filed in Research and development on Feb.18, 2009
I’m working on a new (to me anyway) design for a single Bb horn. I’m told that Dennis Brain favored a Raoux piston horn with an added ascending thumb valve and I’ve decided to try this design out, using rotory valves.
It’s a tricky thing, making a short horn and still having a tuning slide, but I think that having a horn with an ascending 4th valve would really be a fun thing to play. No decision yet as to whether or not it should be reversable into a traditional Bb too.
Of course I have to say that it’s for sale and you can play it at the Southeast horn workshop and buy it, but the artistry of the thing is what I’m enjoying right now. I’ll post a picture of the drawing when its done and maybe some updates along the way.
May 31st, 2010 at 12:48 am
My understanding, based on reading and some communications with Steve Ovitsky, is that Brain’s Raoux was in fact a single F with descending third valve, as was commonly made for the British marketplace. Steve O. owns one. Late in his career Brain switched to an Alexander (model 90?) four valve Bb horn.
The studio recording he did of the Beethoven sonata in the early 1950’s has pictures showing him with an F extension in the fourth valve. There was a long thread about that on the Memphis group last year. Hans Pizka has published a complete, cleaned up version on DVD, and YouTube has lower quality versions of each movement separately, against which Hans railed at length.
None of which should detract from your interesting design.
Regards,
Richard
P.S. thanks for you kind introduction to my post on acoustic physics.