REALLY old/mint Miraphone bass trombone

[bloke]

I'll post pictures of this interesting old horn later. The inside slide tubes are raw nickel silver, and the F attachment is very compact. It's operated by an over engineered hinge device attached to a string and a leather thumb saddle.

I didn't do any F attachment lever conversion stuff. The thing I had to fix was that the highest pitch level it would play at was A=433.

It doesn't actually play as high as shown, because this mouthpiece is a small cup mouthpiece and is inserted too far into the instrument, because this instrument is set up for an intermediate shank and all I had was a small shank 6-1/2AL for testing.
again:
I'll post pictures of this interesting old trombone tomorrow.
My guess is that it is 60 years old.

https://imgur.io/sbwQonu

[bloke]

Obviously, I'll clean up the the solder joints and polish the slide surfaces (interior of brass outside slide tubes, and exteriors of raw nickel-silver inside slide tubes. I probably won't "update" anything. I believe it was purchased as due to a combination of price and curiosity, and not-so-much to function as any sort of regular player. It requires an intermediate shank moutpiece. They own some sort of Steven Mead thing so (hopefully) it will still play up to pitch with the deep cup and shallower shank insertion (as - again - I tested it with a small shank 6-1/2AL...thus: the somewhat raspy resonance).
The F slide was stuck. Now that I've freed it, the alignment seems to be poor. If I do anything else, I'll probably address that single issue.

[arpthark]

Interesting. Is that a thumb screw connecting the bell section to the slide?

I wonder the approximate age.

The low pitch is curious.

[matt g]

This company…

https://www.lätzsch-shop.com/en/web-sho ... mbone.html

…was a big deal making this style of trombone even well into the 1990s.

Interesting find.

[Finetales]

Looks like a traditional Deutsche konzertposaune - very different construction from American trombones. They usually have tiny dual bores but huge bells - a tenor can have a bore as small as .451" and a bell as big as 10"! But, at some point (I think late 19th century?) one of the German makers started trying large bore tenors, and some of those found their way over to the States and became the blueprint for the modern large bore tenor.

Lätzsch, Jürgen Voigt, Thein, Throja, and other German makers still make traditional German trombones, but they're no longer the standard in German orchestras. Lots of American-style instruments out there now. But as Germans will tell it, the instrument is only part of the traditional German trombone sound.

[bloke]

I'm thinking that the top tube is smaller and the bottom tube is just about American bass trombone size.

Of course, a lot of the early California Olds bass trombones were .554"/.564"... and their F attachment bore sizes were still .564"
( I don't care for those instruments very much.)

They used the .554" for the Opera model.

The slide doesn't feel very good, but I bet it will feel pretty good after I clean and polish the raw nickel silver inside slide tubes. It doesn't feel uneven, and I don't see any damage.

As far as standards are concerned, I'm seeing a whole bunch of European tuba players going nuts over yorkaphone C tubas. I wonder if German orchestras are going to start letting those things in.

[Kirley]

The connection between the slide and bell section is the tuning slide?

I like that wrap. Elegant.