Are glassl altos good?

[CrisHagmannBone]

Hey everyone like the title says I’m curious about glassl alto trombones. I’ve never heard of this brand before so anything y’all know would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.

Cris

[Matt K]

Glassl are practically the holy grail of altos. Kind of the alto equivalent of Mt. Vernon 42s. I've only played one and it was fabulous.

[Digidog]

One of my former teachers has one and it's great, terriffic to be more precise

Now that he's retired I maybe should reach out to him and see if he may want to sell it to me.

[hornbuilder]

Herr Glassl passed away some years ago, so, his instruments are not commonly available. They are very good instruments! One of the people that worked for Glassl, Markus Leuchter, now has his own shop, and makes very fine altos in a similar fashion to Glassl.

I was very fortunate to meet Herr Glassl, and Herr Leuchter, when my orchestra flew me to Germany to collect the Glassl contrabass trombone they had bought for me, back in the mid 1990's.

[Retrobone]

Indeed, Markus Leuchter's altos are just as good, and actually better in tune than Glassls up the harmonics. By the way, both these altos are based on an original design by Franz Kuhn. The same goes for the standard Lätzsch alto. I have played on the Kuhn that Glassl copied. Lovely instrument.

[tbonesullivan]

I have never played one, but I would love to try one if I ever get the chance. They VERY rarely show up on the market, as they were all hand made, so there were never a large number of them. Also the players that own them tend to want to hang onto them, as they are truly great instruments. I was reading a bit ago about a Quartet that plays a set of 1920s Franz Kuhn instruments.

Has anyone got a chance to really compare a Glassl Alto to those available from Voigt, Thein, Adams, and others available in Europe?

[CalgaryTbone]

I loved the Adams sterling alto that was at the ITF in Salt Lake City. They actually bought his design and his tooling when he retired. The one difference was that Adams doesn't't make a detachable valve. The Glassl had one in the tuning slide, so you could swap the tuning slide to play it as a straight instrument. Adams told me that he found that it was better to make the horn non-modular, so he offered either straight versions, or horns with a B flat valve.

Jim Scott