[Trombone-l] Contra question

[Ray Horton]

The Eb/D sackbut I played in college I mentioned earlier was made by 
Finke in the early 60s, I believe.  The quartet of sackbuts that U. of 
Louisville bought was early in the historical instruments movement and 
not as historically correct as some later instruments would be.  (One of 
the tenors had an F-attachment!  We eventually had that removed.).  Any 
way, the handle on this Eb/D bass was attached, inside of a piece of 
leather, by a small modern bolt and nut, which made it awkward to use - 
it would catch and buckle, and bop the whole horn against the player's 
mouth.  (It might have worked better when it was first made.)  I took 
off the bolt and left it hooked on by just the leather, and it worked 
much better.  As I tried to describe before, I could hold on to the 
slide the normal way, with the handle in the bottom of my hand, and only 
slide the handle out when needed, or I could hold the handle maybe a 
third of the way off of the slide, which would increase the distance of 
each position a bit, as was suggested earlier, also.  I honestly don't 
recall which method I ended up using the most. 


My point, and I do have one, is that it might be worth it to see if you 
can work with the attachment of the handle to make it work smoother for 
you, so it can work for you and not against you. 


Raymond Horton


Eric Swanson wrote:
> On May 21, 2009, at 4:03 PM, emrose79 at sonic.net wrote:
>
>   
>> Everyone: Thanks for your thoughts. My contra is, I think, "standard"
>> F/C/Db/A (or is that F/CC/DDb/AA), so I guess I'll get by without the
>> handle. The problem I could see is that the handle is loose enough to
>> hit the slide if I'm not careful (not that I'm EVER not careful!)  
>> Being
>> a two-axis joint, it swings quite a bit. My "other" problem is that  
>> "I'm
>> still learning" (I use that line often).
>>
>>
>>     
>
> Ed,
>
> Sounds like you might want to remove the handle (or have it removed)  
> to prevent damaging the slide.  What brand of horn is this, anyway?
>
> Eric Swanson
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