Rebuild of old double belled eurphonium

[John the Theologian]

I thought many of you would like to see these photos of an old double-belled euphonium that came to Merlin Grady's repair shop in parts and he completely rebuilt.

Merlin is kind of a legend as a repair man here in Iowa-- he just finished reworking 2 of my trombone slides--and sometimes he tackles extreme projects such as these. He operates out of a shop out in the country just south of Waterloo, Iowa.

If you're looking for a good repairman, I've linked to testimonials about him as well.

http://www.merlingrady.com/projects/...lbaritone.html

If you open the link you can see the pics.

Here are the testimonials.

http://www.merlingrady.com/testimonials.html

[Will]

That is some nice work. Sounds like he even scratch built a change valve for it. One of my double bell euphs is missing the change valve making the restoration project a non-starter so far. But this gets me to thinking...

[SteveP]

Beautiful instrument! Unless I'm not seeing something correctly I believe the engraving on the bell reads USQMC not USMC. If I'm right you might want to have Grady correct the description on his web page.

[John the Theologian]

Beautiful instrument! Unless I'm not seeing something correctly I believe the engraving on the bell reads USQMC not USMC. If I'm right you might want to have Grady correct the description on his web page.

What would USQMC stand for? US Quarter Master Corp?

[SteveP]

I believe so, yes.

[daruby]

USQMC does mean US Quarter Master Corp, It would also mean the horn was purchased after 1912 and before 1962, when the USQMC became the Army Materiel Command. USQMC was stamped on horns that were purchased for general use throughout the US Army. I had a 1941 Holton dbl bell that had USQMC on it.

I believe horns that were purchased for the Washington DC bands most likely had their own stampings.

Doug