Hi, all,
This is my first post here. After some hemming and hawing, I picked up a rather sad-looking double bell euphonium at a thrift shop. Lots of dents, lead tube to the smaller bell almost crushed, the big bell was rolled back, the valve stems were bent and stuck. *I took it to Harv Hartman who worked his magic on it. Just got it back this weekend, and I'm tickled.
I'm a little rusty - thirty years ago I played trombone in high school, so my embrochure is a little, shall we say, unpracticed, and before this weekend I didn't know anything about playing a valved instrument. Nonetheless, I'm getting some decent sounds out of it working gently through the mid-range on some fingering charts while I get my lips working again, and amusing my kids with bugle calls (my 8-year-old ASKS me to wake her with reveille . . .) and simple songs.
The serial number puts the horn at 1916 and the valves are stamped "Chicago), but the bell is etched Frank Holton, Elkhorn, Wisconsin. The Holton company moved there in 1918, so that gives me a pretty good window for the date of the horn.
The mouthpiece is a Reynolds 8-A. I'm agnostic as to whether it's the right one for me. Harv didn't particularly like it, but I figure I'll work with it for a while and then see whether another would work better.
So far, just lurking and browsing has been delightful. I'll be back with newbie questions down the road.
Here are before and after shots.
Stuart Kern
Silver Spring, MD
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