- - Please visit: Legacy Horn Experience - -
During my sabbatical semester from Arizona State I looked briefly at one of the horns I had worked on, how I could set it up as ascending third valve, and posted some brief impressions.
Immediately after the end of the sabbatical (spring semester of 2021) I was still working in the shop almost as much, as I had one more horn project horn started, that I now realize I have not yet described properly here (although briefly mentioned in this post)
A Yamaha conversion horn?
The idea with this one was to use an older design Yamaha single F and convert it to take crooks. At the time of the earlier post it was not done, and the photo there is with the crook of my Gumpert horn. I still had crooks to make specific to this horn, and I made two, one for F and one for G. (In the future I may also make an Eb crook, I have parts set aside, but it is too hot to work in the shop now).
Crooks?
The crooks seen here are from a Chinese natural horn, significantly modified. I knew going in that they had some major problem. On taking them apart I could see they both had no venturi! The first 2 inches or so, hidden under the visible tubing, were absolutely an acoustical nightmare. So what I did, having several random (and damaged) King single horn pipes on hand, was cut the end of those leadpipes off to mate perfectly with the end of the Chinese crooks. The result was that they both exceeded expectations, especially so the G crook (the F crook having a bit less good intonation).
The crooks are lacquered, as is the horn. I have not removed it at this point, I may later. About 90% of lacquer is present.
Ascending third valve?
What I could then do with the G crook and the G horn first valve slide I made earlier in the year was set this horn up as ascending third valve, a system popular in France back in the day. The setup on my horn involves stringing the third valve to rotate backwards. The horn stands in F, but has a G crook with air going through the third valve slide to lower the basic horn to F. Thus, when you push down the third valve, it shortens the horn by a whole step.
I have mostly had it set up in this manner for the past two months, and I must say this might be the most fun horn of the sabbatical horns to play.
How does it compare?
A first question is how does it compare to before modification? Yamaha single F horns are not bad, but with the modifications it plays more freely and has a more colorful tone.
I’ll have a separate post on overall comparisons of the four sabbatical project horns soon, but this one certainly has the best high range articulations and overall playing comfort of the set, when set up as ascending third valve.
I’m also entertained in my summer practice working with the alternate fingerings provided by this setup. Any high note that can involve the third valve in a fingering is very enhanced compared to a standard single F.
On the other hand, there is no fingering for Eb below the staff, and you can’t produce any notes lower than low A, which limits what music you can play. Those notes come up a lot! I’d like to make a better F crook for the horn at some point in the future, I even made the bending jig before I had to shut down the shop for the summer.
A pilot project
Another part of making this specific horn was that I was looking at it as a possible product — to make more of these at some future point. I think it has the potential to work very well as a crooked standard single F, I would just need a better crook taper to use as a starting point for the front end of the horn.
There are some specific design things unique to this conversion that I won’t share here, but I took things I learned from all the other sabbatical horns to get it to the point it is at right now. I believe it is a type of horn many would enjoy having the opportunity to play on. A topic for a future post as well.
Continue to conclusion of the Sabbatical series
