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[Stewbones43]

The records from the American side of these instruments are probably lost.  Conn destroyed most of their records when they moved from Elkhart Indiana to Abilene Texas in the late 1960s.  Reynolds is out of business.

Could you talk to a major musical instrument dealer in the UK?  I hear John Packer mentioned a few times.  If the firm is old enough maybe they have some sales records. 

Hi Bruce,

I don't think there are many big time UK  brass dealers who have been around since the 1960s. The only ones I can think of are Phil Parker in London and Paxmans, the horn manufacturers, also in London. All the other old ones have disappeared; I am thinking of dealers like Barratts of Manchester, Kitchens of Leeds and Jones and Crosslands of Birmingham. These were old established companies in the 60s.
John Packer started his sales and repair business for woodwind and brass about 30 years ago as a tiny 2 man operation in one room in an old shop converted from a house and I doubt whether they would have kept records from way back then. I am not sure from where we would get the sort of information you are thinking of.

I recently picked up one of the B&H Imperial 555 Bb/F bass bones. I was shocked by how good it was !!
Looking at it, I suspect that they used the King 5B as a start point... no evidence, but that was a popular horn at the time and there are several common features.
What took over from the G ??? As I said, the first Bb/F used was a Piering, but I suspect that the King 2B Symphony (large bore Bb/F that preceded the 5B) did most of the damage... evidence ? ... there are quite a few of those old Kings in the UK but very few Conn 70H models... and the Reynolds Contempora was an early hit with players too.

Chris Stearn

Chris,

Glad you like your Imp. I find mine very easy to play and well suited to the local amateur choral society gig where the average age is bus-pass+10!
I am interested in your thinking that it was probably developed from the King 5B as I was under the assumption that it was B&H's take on an Olds bass trombone because of the similar bore size and bell size with a very much shortened secondary loop in order to give a good E pull on the F tuning slide.
I also find it interesting that the Bb/F tenor Imperial/Besson Academy 408 was made with a .523in bore. Was this caution on the part of B&H, not wanting to make too big a jump from the .487in bore of the established Imperial,Academy 402 etc.?
Perhaps there are answers to these questions in the old B&H archives that Gavin is working from?

Cheers

Stewbones

[blast]

Stewbones, you may well be right about the Olds idea... as I said, I have no proof of a King connection... they just seem similar.
B&H/Besson were a VERY conservative bunch who thought they knew better than the pros that they consulted back then, so they were very slow to change things, and never went far enough.
Chris Stearn.

[Gavin Dixon]

I have found evidence in the B&H records of their having a Conn trombone in the factory to be working from in the mid to late 50s. No mention of any other US makes as yet, but I'm still looking. There is also the issue of the Board of Trade ban on US imports in the 1950s. Does anybody know when this was lifted?

[Stewbones43]

I have found evidence in the B&H records of their having a Conn trombone in the factory to be working from in the mid to late 50s. No mention of any other US makes as yet, but I'm still looking. There is also the issue of the Board of Trade ban on US imports in the 1950s. Does anybody know when this was lifted?

Perhaps it hasn't been lifted yet-shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Stewbones

[davidread]

Denis Wick talks about the import ban being lifted in 1958.

[JohnL]

Stewbones, you may well be right about the Olds idea... as I said, I have no proof of a King connection... they just seem similar.

I think Olds was still making pancake wrap horns in the mid-to-late 1950's; they didn't go with the more common "long pull" wrap until the George Roberts model (which was introduced sometime around 1960, IIRC).

[blast]

I know that they took a King 3B to bits and copied it in the late 1960s... I was told that the result was not good.
Chris Stearn

[Stewbones43]

I think Olds was still making pancake wrap horns in the mid-to-late 1950's; they didn't go with the more common "long pull" wrap until the George Roberts model (which was introduced sometime around 1960, IIRC).

John,

The B&H/Besson models we are talking about were shown in a book published by Besson in 1957 so what you are saying could be correct. So the trombones could have been a distillation of all things good from Olds, King and Conn? Pity they didn't quite hit the exalted target-yes they are good, but not that good.
Another possibly interesting link to Olds is that the B&H Emperor Bb/F-Besson Stratford Bb/F are almost direct copies of the Ambassador A20 Bb/F student bass trombone except for the bore size. Perhaps B&H/Besson were engaged in a product development system similar to the one that Yamaha used early on and that the Chinese are using now, i.e. Wait till somebody else has designed something good, then copy it!

I suspect we may never know.

Cheers

Stewbones

[colin]

My 2p:
I started playing in 4th (bottom) section brass band as a boy in the late 70's on euph then tenor trombone.
The old man on bass trombone was playing a Besson G trombone.
It was a 'New Standard' or 'Prototype' (I forget which) with a leather case which opened at one end and a 'kosicup' mouthpiece.
The player in question switched to conducting around 1981 by which time it would have seemed an oddity to most serious bands.
My town's Salvation Army band continued to use a G/D several years later presumably because an older player was happy with it.
I played bass trombone part on a tenor at some point after that.
Most brass band players couldn't read bass clef.
Older brass band folk still often refered to the part as G trombone for years later.
I mostly learned about Bb/F trombones through county youth concert band and I was loaned the Yamaha tenor model which looked like an 88H.
When I joined the (British) army to train as a bandsman in 1983, I played bass again for a while and was issued with a Boosey & Hawkes Bb/F Imperial bass with frosted silver plate and shiny inside the bell. I liked it at the time. I have no idea what the spec was.

[Stewbones43]

Colin,

I am pretty certain that the Bb/F Imperial bass you were issued with by the Army was the same model Chris and I have been posting about. The Imperial bass and the Besson Academy 409 bass were the same, badge-engineered models with a .555in bore and a 9in or 9.25in bell (I am not sure which size is correct without checking mine)

It is a decent small bass as Chris has said and was built to last!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers

Stewbones

[Edward_Solomon]

My first encounter with the G bass trombone was when a friend, who was working in a music retail outlet in north London, telephoned me to suggest that I scooped up a potential bargain when an unknowing seller entered the shop with a large case, proceeding to take out the instrument therein and show it to the staff. My friend, also a trombonist, recognised immediately what it was and informed him that it would be worth something in the region of £50. The seller, who was tempted to ignore that advice and head to a brass specialist store, headed home. I made tracks for his neighbourhood at the double, hoping to seize an opportunity. I was fortunate enough to be able to acquire the instrument for the £50 asking price, though not without the owner being reluctant to let it go since he thought it might fetch as much as £250.



Thus began a life-long interest in old trombones and I became the proud owner of a 1948 Besson "Prototype" bass trombone in G, 0.483" bore, with original mouthpiece, handle and case. It is stamped "R.M.B. No. 7" on the bell, which I later discovered was the mark of Royal Marines Band No. 7. It was once silver plated, though every trace of plating has worn off. I haven't actually had much occasion to use it since the bore size is really very small. However, that is not true of the other G bass trombone I acquired some years later.

At a British Trombone Society festival in London at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, I encountered the rarer G/D bass trombone on a trade stand and was immediately attracted to it. I tried it out and was instantly impressed by the response compared with the older, narrow bore straight instrument. Clearly this was a larger animal and designed to produce a fuller tone. As I later discovered, it was built to order by Boosey & Hawkes in 1981 for a brass band in Lincolnshire, though by that time the bass trombonist had no interest in playing it and preferred to use - you guessed it - the Boosey & Hawkes "Imperial" 555 bass that had also been supplied.

I pondered the purchase of this G/D bass trombone for the entire festival, finally deciding to stump up the cash and purchase it, since the dealer informed me that there were numerous other interested parties. I parted with over £500 and walked away with my second G bass trombone. Unlike the first one, the G/D has seen numerous outings in orchestras, brass, military and Salvation Army bands and is a fine instrument in the right hands. It has a unique tone quality and when matched with a couple of medium bore tenor trombones, produces an ample bass sound, though not of the weight associated with B flat/F bass trombones.



This instrument still has its original handle, mouthpiece and case, though lacks the optional C slide for the rotary valve attachment. I eventually opted to have an old Wick 2AL mouthpiece ground down so the shank would fit the in-between size of the receiver. The larger mouthpiece helps to avoid the infamous tearing canvas sound of the old G bass trombone and makes for a better sound than the original, rather shallow mouthpiece. I have used this instrument in Vaughan Williams, Sullivan, Holst and Britten to good effect. The clue, as always, is in knowing how to approach it and as with all larger trombones equipped with long slides, a fluid right hand motion goes a long way towards producing a more natural sound, as does the use of alternate positions to avoid long position changes. It's something that has carried over into my technique on all trombones.

[gsmonks]

I don't think the G bass ever went entirely out of production. A few companies have offered it as a "special order", and it's still being made by a few smaller companies. They don't have them in stock, but list them and make them if and when the odd order comes in. Thein, Dotzauer and several others will make one if you ask.

Admittedly, these are one-off's that don't count as production models, and the few made are in the hands of people not inclined to part with them.

[MoominDave]

Speaking, as I did earlier in this thread, about creative anachronism...

Friday night - a choral society gig with a small string section and a quiet choir, Mozart 'Solemn Vespers' + Beethoven Eguales (trumpet + 3 bones) + Daniel Speer Sonatas (3 bones). Section of Reynolds Medalist, Benge 160F, B&H Imperial G/D.

Saturday (last) night - Oxford Symphony Orchestra "Russian evening"; Rimsky Capriccio Espagnol, Prokofiev Violin concerto (no bones), Shostakovich 1. Section of Benge 160F, Besson 10-10, B&H Imperial G/D.
I fancy that we managed to provide quite an authentic Russian trombone sound with our all medium bore section - and comments from the audience were very positive about the section sound. Food for thought... We like the sound of large bores at the back of an orchestra... But I wonder if it is maybe not what listeners want in many cases?

[Bob1062]

Sounds like fun!

I think that the reason smaller bore trombones may sound better in the audience is that as the sound travels, it "mellows" or whatever you want to say (describing sounds is not my forte; ha! ). A larger trombone that sounds broad, mellow,.... whatever up close may mellow,... too much when heard from a distance.

I DO think that when playing in the low valve register at a consistent high volume, that the audience may like/appreciate/be thankful for/.... a larger bore trombone. 


It's kind of a shame to see a Prokofiev concerto without trombones. The piano concerto in C (can never remember the number!) was THE most fun for the littlest amount notes piece I have ever played. Descending lines to low C's with the string basses, shorter long-note solo line, ff  low B natural, the oh-it's-perfect-transition-into-1-near-the-end, and some overall really cool music (the string part in the middle of the 3rd movement made me think of an ocean!).

[MoominDave]

Oh, it was fun!

The spot where the advantage became really clear was on the first page of the Shostakovich part - around about figure 27 or so. The three trombones each play an intervallic four-quaver figure, one after the other, at forte, in a sequence of a rising semitone. Someone had marked 'ff' on the part - but, although it needs to come through, it doesn't need to be as loud as that. And on the medium-bores, a nicely matched and totally unstrained forte parp-parp-parp-parp parp-parp-parp-parp parp-parp-parp-parp - it was perfect; a colourful sound that carried.

Not being in the Prokofiev wasn't too upsetting - it's a great piece to listen to, and the tuba player was enjoying himself!

[Edward_Solomon]

We went one better a couple of days ago. The G bass trombone was not the preferred choice in Russia, so any attempt to use one is arguably either experimental or trying to emulate British performance practice before 1950. However, we elected to use two King 3B tenor trombones, a B&H Imperial G/D bass trombone and a B&H Imperial E flat bass tuba for Elgar's In the South, which worked very well indeed. All of the loud dynamics were played exactly as written, including fff, and sounded brilliant and crisp, while never endangering the strings sat directly before us. Switching in the second half to modern large bore instruments for Rimsky Korsakov's Sheherazade really brought home the difference in sound. We received quite a few accolades that evening and even if there was barely a soul in the orchestra that was old enough to know what a bass trombone in G was, there were certainly more than a couple in the audience that recognised and appreciated it.

[MoominDave]

The G bass trombone was not the preferred choice in Russia, so any attempt to use one is arguably either experimental or trying to emulate British performance practice before 1950.

creative anachronism...

And creative angeographism. Or whatever the word might be.

[svenlarsson]

The Salvation Army brass band  in Sweden used the G-bass well into the 60:s.
In the Salvation Army congress 1965 there was a super big Salvation brass band marching thru Stockholm with 4 G-bass trombones in front!
There are still some of them around, I have one and some of my colleagues have a G-bass at home.

[Bob1062]

Dave, have you used it in a trombone choir? What part would you play on it (ideally!)?

[MoominDave]

No! Well, a choir of 3, I suppose, on Friday night, but nothing more substantial.

It wouldn't make sense to use it under anything of larger than medium bore.