For all you Swiss F alto cornet fans...

[arpthark]

Check this thing out. Horn adapter stuck in the receiver and some dents and busted solder joints and such, but it has (what i assume are) beautiful Bauerfeind valves and a nice case to boot. Sandy 's Joseph! Plays quite well even with the horn thing. I bet it'd be great with a proper alto horn mouthpiece.

[bloke]

Probably thirty years ago, I gave one of those to my oboe playing daughter when she was first in high school so she could take something out to the football games. She learned all the scales and how to read when playing it in a day. I might not be remembering correctly but I believe that soon thereafter she figured out that she could take a piccolo out there and it would be a lot less burdensome.
My next daughter actually played French horn, and I handed it off to her.
I've got a friend who picked up two of those in a pawn shop down in Mississippi, their bell diameters aren't the same, and there are a few other differences - even though they were both one of these made in Switzerland and obviously had come from the same school.

That reminds me of the phone call I got last night from my granddaughter (who's now that same age, and who's also a serious horn player as maybe some of you remember). She wants to do one of those whatchamacallit type of layered recordings where she covers all of the brass parts on the first hundred bars of the scherzo movement to Bruckner 4 (with her playing the trumpet, the horn, the trombone...all the parts on the correct instruments...everything except the tuba part), and she wants me to do that part only. She says that she could play the tuba part on horn, but she wants it to sound more like a tuba.

[arpthark]

This one also has notches in the tuning slides for where to extend them for Eb, but I don't have an Eb main slide for it.

[York-aholic]

.

That reminds me of the phone call I got last night from my granddaughter (who's now that same age, and who's also a serious horn player as maybe some of you remember). She wants to do one of those whatchamacallit type of layered recordings where she covers all of the brass parts on the first hundred bars of the scherzo movement to Bruckner 4 (with her playing the trumpet, the horn, the trombone...all the parts on the correct instruments...everything except the tuba part), and she wants me to do that part only. She says that she could play the tuba part on horn, but she wants it to sound more like a tuba.

@bloke
That has got to be a wonderful feeling, when granddaughter calls grandpa to record the tuba part on her self motivated recording project!

[bloke]

I need to go see them. Either Thanksgiving or Christmas or something. They're getting all grown up really really fast.

[Tubajug]

I've got one of these on my shelf, too! It's got the same yellow fabric on the case as well. The horn mouthpiece adapter is also stuck on mine, ha! Mine is silver or nickel, I forget which. I've tried to convince my horn-playing daughter to take it to marching band/pep band and see what the director says.

[arpthark]

Update:

- got the leadpipe unbent

- de-dented the 2nd valve slide

- got the horn adapter unstuck from the receiver (ended up soldering a junk horn mouthpiece to it and using a vise and lots of penetrant)

- got all the slides, valves, and valve caps unstuck

- put it all back together

- stuck a proper alto horn mouthpiece in it (Wick 2)

Sounds fantastic! Even I, a notorious high brass flop, can play it. Not super happy with my soldering job that I did with the receiver brace, so I may redo that at some point. Cool little instrument. Will probably post it for sale after I get it cleaned up a bit, so let me know if you want a $150 alto cornet.

[bloke]

Put it on a band director Facebook page and refer to it as a Willson compact marching mellophone.

[arpthark]

Put it on a band director Facebook page and refer to it as a Willson compact marching mellophone.

That's what it was originally listed as—"mellophone/marching French horn."

Ended up buying it, an 1890s Distin Eb tuba (great shape), and an old friction fit Conn 4H from the same seller.

[bloke]

Put it on a band director Facebook page and refer to it as a Willson compact marching mellophone.

That's what it was originally listed as—"mellophone/marching French horn."

Ended up buying it, an 1890s Distin Eb tuba (great shape), and an old friction fit Conn 4H from the same seller.

I know you often drive to buy things, and I just wanted to let you know that I'm driving to buy something on Sunday:
I picked up another Jakob Winter case in good shape. I don't know when I'll ever get it ready for sale, but I've had a West German built M-W 25 tuba sitting here for quite a long time waiting for me to restore it and get it sold. I actually purchased some parts for it from B&S prior to the Buffet acquisition parts availability shut down, and I got a gold brass JP379BB bell for it back before the China tariffs, so it should be a very nice tuba, eventually. According to the seller, the interior dimensions of this case should accommodate it. I always try to grab good cases at good prices which will possibly/probably prove to be useful, because - if/when I sell tubas to schools - they require cases... and more and more schools seem to be changing their rules to purchase reconditioned instruments.
I talked the the seller into driving 125 miles one way to meet me, and I'm driving 140 miles one way to meet him.

ROAD TRIP !!!

====================

Locally, someone was offering a decent looking older King mellophone and what looked to be a good case. I say "older" because the case vintage makes that statement. They were being weird and told me that they wanted to ship this one out instead of selling it locally. To me that suggests that they suspect it was stolen. LOL

Sometimes I pick up used mellophones, even though schools always seem to have plenty. I rate King as the best of those which are still made today. I never thought much of the Kanstul marching instruments, with the exception being their mellophone - as those played even better than King. A whole bunch of bands bought/buy Yamaha and Jupiter.. meh. The JP mellophone is a very good copy of Yamaha - as band directors seem to view Yamaha as the answer to everything (other than keeping local tax rates down), and at least the JP ones only cost half as much.

[arpthark]

Put it on a band director Facebook page and refer to it as a Willson compact marching mellophone.

That's what it was originally listed as—"mellophone/marching French horn."

Ended up buying it, an 1890s Distin Eb tuba (great shape), and an old friction fit Conn 4H from the same seller.

I know you often drive to buy things, and I just wanted to let you know that I'm driving to buy something on Sunday:
<snip>
I talked the the seller into driving 125 miles one way to meet me, and I'm driving 140 miles one way to meet him.

ROAD TRIP !!!

Yup -- although in New England, you drive 140 miles and you're already through 4 states and way up in Maine. I took a "long" (for here) trip of about 80 miles (across 2 states) to southern Massachusetts for this little set.

Get out of blokeplace, get aired out a bit, safe travels!

[bloke]

Wandering further off topic, I picked up three good Blessing marching baritones in good shape with good cases on another recent actual road trip. I respect those, because they offer a good sound, good intonation, feature Bauerfeind European valve sections, and - if consumers want them to blow a little more open - I can swap out the receivers for large receivers and open up the front ends of the mouthpipes, affecting both of those alterations really easily.