I don't want to turn this blog into a freak show, but this is too good to pass up:

A carved wooden French horn:



The inquiring minds want to know - how does it play? The maker speaks:
not very good to tell you the truth. It marginally worked, and the valves do register different notes. As I build more instruments and experiment with different woods, I imagine I will eventually discover a combination that makes it sound better. But just refining my technique so I can build them with thinner tubes makes a big difference on sound.
He also made a semi-playable wooden trombone and plans for a tuba and a trumpet.

Now, a real instrument - a borosilicate glass trombone:



When the saints... on the glass trombone. He say, that the glasstrombone is difficult to play and takes a lot of air - sounds good though!

Josef Lidl rotary flugelhorn

I think this horn ended up costing me at least three times its real price, and probably more. It was an impulse eBay buy, and then "just needs a little oil" turned into a $200 valve repair. On top of that it has a European-size lead pipe, needing a special mouthpiece - trumpet shank, but shorter (of course it came with a wrong one). So, custom-cut conical Parduba mouthpiece (6½ double-cup) = more money. I actually sold my guitar to cover the repairs. Even then it's not perfect - the intonation is uneven, I have to keep the third slide pulled halfway out.

Nonetheless, I am not bitter. I had it since May and I still cannot get over just how cool this thing is. It used to be lacquered, but now it's all raw brass except inside the bell; large, heavy, awkward, totally steampunk thing - look at the the valves in the last pic. Sometimes I feel like just sitting and quietly holding it in my arms. I used to think I have an incomplete Y chromosome, missing the gene that confers the ability to tell front- from rear-wheel drive... but I guess my gear obsession gene is still expressed, just in a different way.
Good people at Oakland's A&G Repair, namely Brian, replaced the valve springs, cleaned and lubed the whole assembly, so the valves are superfast and supersmooth. I find it easier to play throughout the entire register on this thing than on my trumpet, and I expected it to be the opposite - flugels are notoriously hard to control above the high G. I think it might be the mouthpiece. I read about double cup before and thought it was a gimmick, but maybe not... And, of course, the sound, the sound! deep V mp + extra-wide conical bore = deep, dark, mellow.


A thread on Lidl Flugels on the TrumpetMaster board - people mostly say good things.
Not everyone is happy with Lidls, though:
Of course, there are good rotary trumpets and bad ones, just like with piston trumpets.  I've bought a number of poor ones on eBay, all antiques, mostly from Czechoslovakia. - from Youtube comments