Antique Musical Instruments/1912 olds serial 819

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Expert: - 8/19/2009


Question
silver trombone says made by fe olds Los Angeles ca pat-April 2, 1912.  Silver with gold embossed, with a strange tuning screw near handle in a crescent moon shaped cross bar on the slide.  serial number is 819.  This was given to me by an elderly man in 1982 I am wondering if this is something of value?  It's in excellent condition.

Answer
Yes, I would say that that horn is definitely a keeper.  The in-slide tuning was designed to allow as much conical tubing in the instrument as possible.  By putting together the two parts of the trombone that basically have to be done cylindrical tubing (the main slide and the tuning slide), the whole bell section could be made conical.  Conical tubing makes the horn have a more mellow tone.  

Antique Musical Instruments

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Kenton Scott

Expertise

Please note: My area is BRASS instruments, not other wind, string or percussion instruments. I will provide information on antique, obscure and out of production BRASS instruments. 1) Please don't ask for evaluations, I'll not provide them on this site. 2) I am often asked very similar questions, so I'd invite you to first check on Horn-u-Copia.net. Much of the information I have garnered about this topic, I have posted on this WEB site.

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I perform in several historical bands, have informally researched the area, repair brass instruments, and operate a Forum dedicated to the topic at http://horn-u-copia.net

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B.S. Ed, M.S.

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