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In short, the second project horn is playable, and I have a new book out.
To the horn first, this one as has been mentioned combines parts from a vintage Mirafone with a lovely bell (but missing parts of the valve section, clearly it had been hanging on a wall somewhere) with the valve section of a Yamaha single horn. The idea was also to redesign the instrument to follow the design of a 19th century Schmidt single F as close as was reasonable, which required eliminating some tubing, rebending some tubing, and using what was the Eb crook to play the horn in F.
The horn became playable yesterday and I’m very happy with the initial results! I have three different leadpipes that I can use with the horn and I’ll give each a fair test in the next few days. Depending on how testing and further modifications go I could be done with this horn next week. The photos below show the front and back of the horn.
Besides that project, the past month or so I was also finishing up a project mostly completed over the summer — a book! — but not horn related.
To maintain the suspense for a moment longer, working on the final updates of that book I have been checking the sales stats regularly, and the best selling lately are the warmup book, the low horn book, and the natural horn book. If you have never considered buying, check them out.
But if you search my publications on Amazon you will now find a new book in my author page (here), and it will likely be a curiosity to the horn community. Model Railroading in American OO, 1930-68 is on the history of a model railroad scale, one rarely used today but one that I got interested in when I was in high school and have worked in every since. Maybe that is part of why horn appealed to me also, to be honest — why do the easy model railroad scale (or instrument) that other people use?
I don’t think many Horn Matters readers will find the book of special interest, but if you are curious search for it on Amazon, it is available in Kindle and print editions. The cover is below.
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