The reason for the investigation of the long cornet history (next post) is a Holton-Clarke cornet I recently bought. "Wound in as many differing manners as one can imagine" is right - that thing has a very strange-looking s-shaped wrap to the tubing past the leadpipe, with no less that two "tuning slides" - one a true tuning slide and another a key change slide. Holton-Clarke seems to have been a professional model, good quality instrument, reasonably abundant on eBay and thus pretty cheap - I wonder why it is not touted as a sleeper? It seems to be very dependent on the right mouthpiece, though: I tried a few and was very unhappy with the sound I was getting; the right one seems to be the one it came with - a shallow Holton Revelation 72. It sounds very bright, not much like a cornet, but the deep mouthpieces I tried (including a Conn EZ Tone that also came with it) just don't work too well. I think there was a change in the mouthpiece shank length standard around 40s or 50s, this instrument set up for the old, shorter ones.
But the interesting part is something else: I found a handful of medals inside the case: Illinois Grade School Band Assoc. - "Ensemble," "Concert," "Solo." There are small inked numbers on the backs of the ribbons - 63, 64, then two more medals without dates but with IHSA - high school, I assume. Looks like the kid was quite invested in the instrument. I wonder if he got a new one for college and left this one behind together with the trophies, or just stopped playing altogether? He shouldn't be that old, either - finishing middle school in '64 makes him just over 60...
No comments:
Post a Comment