Trombone Materials

[BillO]

Scintillating!

[ExZacLee]

Makes me interested in getting a steel bell.

Steel, really? I was skeptical (how do they spin one?)

It was definitely steel... and this being a screw bell, I expected it to be front heavy, but it wasn't. Either the integrated balance weight or the lightness of the steel or both did a good job for making that not the case.

I reckon they make one the way other bells are made, it'd just wear down the tools a bit quicker.

[harrisonreed]

If it was the Eliott Mason model, that horn is a goer. She's a rippah

[ExZacLee]

If it was the Eliott Mason model, that horn is a goer. She's a rippah

It had that curved hand brace and a removable pipe (I think) - it was definitely a ripper. I was playing my Williams that night, and there wasn't a huge difference in blow between horns, if that means anything. It had some pop, that's for sure.

[DougHulme]

Stainless steel is an alloy!

[BGuttman]

Stainless steel is an alloy!

And so is Brass.

For that matter, steel is an alloy being iron with a bit of carbon in it. There are several forms of steel but stainless steel is an alloy of iron and several other metals so that it doesn't rust.

Note that there are a lot of different alloy compositions of brass, bronze, stainless steel, and other things we often think of as a single entity.

[MahlerMusic]

Different alloys definately play different.
I have played two identisk conn 88 h. One with red bell, one with yellow.

It was a huge difference. For me the yellow did have a lot more projection, clarity and stability throughout the dynanic range. The red did offer a very mellow sound at soft dynanics but gives a really flashy edge When pushed, for my taste a little too flashy. .
I like both but really dont understand why so few conn 88 players dont use the yellow, as i see that bell as typical conn sound but with , as well, added qialities that f ex Bachs have. Is it just traditions?

I agree with you. When I was looking for a tenor, after doing too much research and looking at what most Symphonic players played, I saw that Yellow brass was used a lot more when it came to price does not matter and you could pick what ever you want new. I really liked what I was reading about the Conn but was too scared that the thin Red bell would be too light for heavy Orchestra work. After playing all three options I picked Yellow Brass with a F attachment for heavy Orchestra stuff and Thin Red Brass for everything else. I ended up loving the yellow brass as I could use it for everything. The Thin Red Brass has a great sound but I feel limited if that was the only model I had.

I find a lot of people love the 88h or 8h (vintage or thin red bell version) but most will have another horn to also play. If you could only play one horn today I would place the thin Red bell version low on the list.

I get lots of complements on my sound with the yellow brass but people just think it's a regular student trombone but every time I pull out the Red 8HT people will see it and say "hey is that an 8H... nice trombone". Red has more flash I guess.

[RichC]

ok, so how about slides? What are the effects of different materials on the slide? Rose vs. yellow outertubes and nickle vs. yellow end crooks?

[Mv2541]

ok, so how about slides? What are the effects of different materials on the slide? Rose vs. yellow outertubes and nickle vs. yellow end crooks?

Edwards, Rath, and Shires all have nickel crooks by default, and similarly all suggest pairing a rose (or red) bell with a yellow tuning slide and vice versa. Standard Bachs and Courtois have yellow bells and yellow tuning slides and do fine without the nickel crook, so perhaps the nickel crooks were introduced to offset the rose tuning slides? Actually on second thought were the really vintage Conns the first to start using nickel crooks, specifically in the era when the tubes were bronze? Bronze also has a pretty high copper content right (?), so maybe it is in the same theory. Just some thoughts.

The slide tubes really affect the sound and feel of the horn; I believe the rose tubes (in addition to the high overall amount on the bell section) are why the Alessi horns have SS leadpipes. I think anyone sensible would say it boils down to a game of balance.

[bimmerman]

Interestingly, back in the NY / Mt Vernon days red/gold tubes with yellow crooks, sometimes with nickel oversleeves, were available. My 9 has a sleeve-less red tubed/yellow crook slide, my 16 is the same with sleeves, and my dad's 36 is the same setup. All factory, but maybe special order? I dunno.

I have a suspicion that this old Bach construction may have inspired the Alessi horn's slide.

[harrisonreed]

The Alessi slide was based on a Bach slide that doesn't seem to have been standard, that he really liked.

[smcgonigal]

Shires MD 220g
Besson 940 185g (do not know much about this horn)

[jbeatenbough]

Have you seen the wooden bell flair that BAC is messing with? I think it is 100% wood/0% copper,zinc,silver & gold

[harrisonreed]

Have you seen the wooden bell flair that BAC is messing with? I think it is 100% wood/0% copper,zinc,silver & gold

[jbeatenbough]

Crazy huh?

[harrisonreed]

My favorite is the "Elliott Mason Model" (rent to own!) that isn't even close to the same product as the Elliott Mason trombone that they made for the man himself.



Or the stained glass trombone.

Or the Multi-Track YouTube special model

Or the trombone they draped aluminum foil over and spray painted gold.

Or the trombone that they attached decorative vine shaped garden stakes to instead of bracing.



Or the world's first perfect slide that was perfectly in tune in all seven positions and every partial.

It's all a bunch of weird vanity projects.

[jbeatenbough]

They do get a "little" creative, don't they? = )

[Matt K]

Or the trombone they draped aluminum foil over and spray painted gold.

Or the trombone that they attached decorative vine shaped garden stakes to instead of bracing.

I somehow missed those two... I need to see these lol

[timothy42b]

Now that's a counterweight!

[AwesomeDad]

Late to the party but has anyone used a copper lead pipe? I love mine for my flugel and my 897z comes with two and thought about having one made in copper....

JJ

[bassbone721]

Nah, I believe the most common material use is the plutonium pipe.

[Posaunus]

Hello Folks,
In the Trombone musical instrument, the most common material use is yellow brass pipe.

Nah ... ... ... this is too easy.

I'll let others provide the appropriate flip responses.

[Windmill]

I realize that the material, and the thickness of the slide matters for me more than the bell... I love heavy slides and just can't find my way with lightweight ones. Just from the playing feeling and the slotting.

[soseggnchips]

I realize that the material, and the thickness of the slide matters for me more than the bell... I love heavy slides and just can't find my way with lightweight ones. Just from the playing feeling and the slotting.

I prefer a heavier slide as well. For me it's not about the sound or the blow, though - I just like the feel of the action on a heavier slide.

[BGuttman]

If you like heavy slides find an old TIS (Tuning in Slide) trombone. A Conn 40H (or the 38H or 42H) Ballroom, an original Olds (make sure you put on an aftermarket counterweight), etc.

Modern TIS horns have much lighter slides -- manufacturing has allowed a lighter weight tuning mechanism.

I have one old TIS horn that has a lighter slide -- a Holton Paul Whiteman.

[Elow]

Even though beryllium is toxic, a beryllium copper bell wouldn't be dangerous to the player. For someone involved in some of the processes that go into making that bell (notably any process that produces fine particulates, such as buffing), appropriate precautions would be necessary.

How should one go about buffing a beryllium bell? Should i be fine if im just cleaning up one solder joint?

[BGuttman]

Even though beryllium is toxic, a beryllium copper bell wouldn't be dangerous to the player. For someone involved in some of the processes that go into making that bell (notably any process that produces fine particulates, such as buffing), appropriate precautions would be necessary.

How should one go about buffing a beryllium bell? Should i be fine if im just cleaning up one solder joint?

A filter type respirator (like an N95) should be sufficient. Also, wet buffing or wet sanding will tend to reduce the dust. The big hazard is breathing in the dust.

[timothy42b]

A filter type respirator (like an N95) should be sufficient. Also, wet buffing or wet sanding will tend to reduce the dust. The big hazard is breathing in the dust.

In almost 30 years now as a working engineer, a beryllium dust contamination is the only time ever I've actually used calculus.

It was a dental operation that had a failure in the dust collection system, and to report the correct quantity to the EPA they needed to know the volume of material collected. The shape of the wastebasket they put it in (yeah! I wasn't there for that part! hope they used N95 or better, I'd have gone PAPR) was a truncated cone. They didn't know the formula for volume, and this was pre-Internet.

Neither did I, but it was simple enough to write equations for the shape and do a triple integration.

It would take me a lot longer now! but then a quick google would give the answer without the effort. Not sure if that's good or bad.

[BaritoneJack]

The Chinese are master metallurgists and had been for centuries before the Europeans figured it out.

The Chinese didn't start making cupro-nickel alloys until about 200-300 BC; people on the Iranian Plateau were using copper and arsenic to make the earliest form of bronze by about 5,000 BC. By 4,500 BC, people of the Vinča culture, in present-day Serbia, were making a superior bronze by alloying copper with tin instead of arsenic. By 1800 BC, steel was being made in Anatolia (present-day Turkey), and before the Chinese had worked out how to make cupro-nickel, Spanish blacksmiths were forging steel swords. By 600 BC, the real whizz-kids in the field of large-scale high-carbon crucible steel production were in South India and Sri-Lanka, and building an international reputation for their steel.

However advanced the Chinese were in some respects, the historical record proves that they were way behind other nations in the field of metallurgy.

With best regards,
Jack

[harrisonreed]

At least some Chinese smiths had knowledge of advanced metallurgy at least 2700 years ago. This object is by all rights something that should not exist in this condition, today.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Goujian

The blade is so advanced for its time that it has tin alloyed into its edge at a different percentage than the rest of the blade, and sulphur alloyed into the pattern along the blade to prevent tarnishing. Not random or uniform, but a deliberate choice of materials for specific features at key areas on the blade.

Is it as good as forging steel during the bronze age? No. It's cool though! Cooler than the bronze age Greek swords from the same period that no longer exist.

[greenbean]

In the table, Nickel-Silver is referred to as "Nickel." Few people knowingly call it Nickel - mostly those who don't know the difference. Calling it "Nickel" might cause confusion because Nickel itself is also used in instrument making (usually in plating).

[Digidog]

I wonder what a titanium bell would be like. It seems to be a metal as good as any to make a nice bell from.

Also: Titanium valves and moving parts are common in the car industry, so it would definitely be possible to take off some weight from a horn by producing and fitting titanium valves.

I suspect titanium would be expensive, though, since it takes a lot of energy to manipulate and form it.

[BGuttman]

I'm pretty sure that the reason brass has become the de-facto standard material for instruments was because it was the easiest metal to work in the past. And much like the 4 stroke internal combustion engine it has been under development for so long that the current designs are specifically made to work around its deficiencies and our expectations of sound are attuned to its responses. Developing an alternate material is a difficult process. Just look at how long it has taken to make a plastic trombone that sounds even close to a brass one (the first ones appeared over 50 years ago).

We have found some alternative materials that work almost like brass: nickel-silver (which is a copper alloy containing no silver), cupro-nickel (a copper-nickel alloy that works and looks like brass), sterling silver (mostly for bells and flutes).

I might expect that other metals could be made to work, but the final product may not look like today's trombone. And nobody's going to spend the R&D money on something new since there isn't much of a market for it. This becomes a project for a school to try.

[BrianJohnston]

According to various websites, bronze is typically, but not exactly always:

90% Copper
10% Tin

[Matt K]

Isn't there usually a little zinc in bronze? I could be off base. Blast from the past, been ages since I made this post But updated accordingly

[BGuttman]

Coin metal is copper with 4% tin and 1% zinc. Traditional bronzes are primarily mixtures of copper and tin, sometimes with other elements.

Alloy 903 is 88%Cu, 8%Sn, and 4% Zn.

There are Manganese bronzes, Aluminum bronzes, Leaded bronzes, and Silicon bronzes. Wikipedia has a huge list of copper alloys.

[BrianJohnston]

Isn't there usually a little zinc in bronze? I could be off base. Blast from the past, been ages since I made this post But updated accordingly

There can be, but usually it's just a 2 metal alloy. If there is a 3rd metal involved it's usually zinc, but typically only between 1-7% if that.

[Posaunus]

I doubt that they knew much about zinc in the Bronze Age!

[BGuttman]

I doubt that they knew much about zinc in the Bronze Age!

They also couldn't purify metals to the level we do today. Lord knows what tramp metals were included, if unintended, in ancient bronze. I'm sure some archeological metallurgist is doing X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry to find out how pure Bronze Age bronze actually was.

[JohnL]

I'm sure some archeological metallurgist is doing X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry to find out how pure Bronze Age bronze actually was.

Yup.
https://www.getty.edu/publications/arti ... /36-tykot/

[timothy42b]

Interesting article.
In the early 90s when I started with a public works department, we had an XRF and used it to check for lead paint in housing. It was in a locked cabinet and we had to post a sign on the outside of the window on that room, in case of fire department needing to respond.

[BGuttman]

Very interesting article. I've used a pXRF made by Thermo Scientific. In fact, I did a mouthpiece metals study for the old TTF with a bunch of old mouthpieces supplied by Doug Elliott and DJ Kennedy. I can't point to the post right now. I remember doing a brass analysis for Benn Hanson on slide tubes, but I don't think I got conclusive results and never published it on TTF.

I used an older XRF machine to measure plating thicknesses, and this had to be isolated due to a lot of stray X-rays (I even had to wear a film badge), but the compact systems like the Bruker or the Thermo are safe to use, as long as you don't point it at somebody. X-rays are initiated by the press of a trigger and stop after the preset scan time. New software is very good at finding trace materials above the atomic number for Silicon. Things like aluminum, oxygen, and boron are very hard to find, but heavy metals like lead, silver, and gold show up pretty well.

[dorutzzu92]

Anyone knows information about Kruspe material (Thein K-style material) ?

[TromboneSam]

For those curious, I heard back from Anderson Plating today and they no longer make electro-formed trombone bells.

Does this make BAC the only current manufacturer of electro-formed silver trombone bells?

[hornbuilder]

Anyone knows information about Kruspe material (Thein K-style material) ?

90/10 copper/zinc. Red brass

[ROCHUT]

For those curious, I heard back from Anderson Plating today and they no longer make electro-formed trombone bells.

Does this make BAC the only current manufacturer of electro-formed silver trombone bells?

I am not certain how Bach is currently doing it

[BGuttman]

For those curious, I heard back from Anderson Plating today and they no longer make electro-formed trombone bells.

Does this make BAC the only current manufacturer of electro-formed silver trombone bells?

I am not certain how Bach is currently doing it

Bach was using Anderson Plating for electroformed silver (SGX) bells.

[elmsandr]

Were the SGX bells electroformed? Thought those were sheet.

The Sterling plus bells were electroformed, haven’t seen those in a while.

Cheers,
Andy