John Kowalchuk, Mutes etc.

Another mellophone intervention.

Some mellophones have very useable bells. Not all, but some. The trick is finding a good one.

This bell and branch were used, adding tuning slide and first branch for the corpus of a Cor d'Orchestre.

The end of the first branch ends in a receiver which accepts leadpipes or crooks in various lengths.

Cor Solo

This natural horn was assembled from a bell section from a B&H Oxford single Bb, a stock replacement leadpipe and brass tubing.

My best reference was the photo in Rick Seraphinoff's brochure of the "Classical Cor Solo".

The bell was cut down to 10" and the ring soldered back around the edge. The first crook that I made was the F (Shown installed on the horn). Attempts to make a full Eb crook were unsatisfactory so I came up with a whole-tone coupler which is shown installed on the upper leg of the F crook. A semi-tone coupler came next, made from two trumpet slide knuckles and some straight lengths of tube. This is seen on the lower leg of the F crook in the photo.

Shortening the horn to make the A crook possible would make the rest of my crooks too high so the shortest crook is G. The horn can be played in G, F#, F, E, Eb and D using primary crooks and adding either or both couplers.

I have combined several Eb conversion slides from Oxford and Besson horns into a C crook. It consists of nearly 90" inches of tubing in four, six inch coils. It looks like it belongs on a still but it saved buying another 12 foot length of tubing for just one crook