Brief Notes on Piston Valve Horns

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An unexpected benefit of teaching at ASU is that they own a pair of piston valved horns, an early 20th century Hawkes single horn that takes crooks and a Selmer double horn from probably the 1950s.

Having played a good bit on several different piston valved instruments I would say that they do have a faster action speaking generally compared to rotary valves. In the days of single horns piston valves were fairly common, but today they are quite rare.

The best piston valved horn I ever tried (briefly) was a custom double descant horn by McCracken. A great horn but clearly one of a kind, with a much more comfortable, slanted action of the valves compared to the ASU instruments.

The question people always wonder is why so few piston valve double horns? I suspect strongly that the main reason is because rotary valves just work better in terms of actually laying out the tubing arrangement for a double horn. The double horn piston valves are exceptionally long, which has several negatives for horn design.

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