pjv wrote: Sat Jan 30, 2021 4:48 am
Pride in craftsmanship.
(Why has so much of modern day capitalism excluded this oh so inspirational aspect of human expression from our daily endeavors?)
random thoughts:
and NOT meant to serve as counter-arguments nor contradictions to anyone's else posts/thoughts
I'm not so sure that it's as much about pride as it is about
> the lack of people who are interested in working with their hands (We all know what happened at Anderson Silver Plating Company, last year.)
> the lack of emphasis on attention to detail (whereby even 90% is considered "A" work in schools, yet none of us would choose to fly in a 90% - nor even 99% - airliner)
> errors are now considered to be unavoidable
> even more of instrument manufacturing being machine-done - and by more-and-more accurate machines (which, admittedly, equals more consistency)
> we've been through several "style" periods (since the 1930's) whereby "spare/lean/simple/stark" have been the rule of the day
Shires trombone engraving is elaborate...albeit not so organized and artistic as the examples above (nor other century-ago makers' examples)
One brass instrument store - that I know of - has Jinbao engrave many of the tubas they import, albeit it reminds me of the (as expressed above) the Shires engraving.
Engraving on most of the higher-priced European instruments (during the last more-than-half-century) has also been sparse...and we seem to look up to those manufacturers a great deal.
one last thought:
Even the beyond-craft and bordering-on-art (though repeated over-and-over) engraving of a century ago makes the point (yes?) that consumers (obviously, or those manufacturers would not have had that engraving done) base a much-larger-that-many-musical-instrument-consumers-will-admit-to percentage of purchase choices on visual (vs. sonic) characteristics...even the "check out this super-fat CC tuba" phenomenon.
GETTING BACK TO THE "HOLTON" TOPIC...
Though I've owned (and own) some Holton tubas, I'm not a Holtonphile, meaning I don't know all that much about them.
I'm under the impression that Wade's larger engraving pattern/style (which was/is on the bells of some of the 345 models (as well as - scaled down - on this seemingly-rare model 560, which I'm morphing to 5-valve front-action) was featured during the 1960's and perhaps into the 1970's, but - later - Holton (towards the end of model 345 production) retreated to a much smaller engraving pattern. I seem to recall that
@djwpe's 345 sported the smaller pattern...speaking of which: That was yet another 345 that was found (pre-restoration) in NOT-horribly-distressed condition.
I was able to find at least one low-resolution picture that is an example of the believed-to-be-later smaller engraving pattern on model 345 tubas:
