| Engraved:Lidl Brno
Length: 25.5 in
length of the tubing: 111 in
gsmonks: I own one of these:
Lidl used to market it as a bass trumpet.
It is in tenor Bb, but not all companies market these horns as bass trumpets. Some refer to this version as a tenor, and refer only to the horn with a trombone-size bell as the bass (possibly also having four valves and being pitched in C).
The thing is, I have played a number of "bass trumpets" over the years, and I cannot consider this horn to be a bass trumpet.
For one thing, these old Lidls are almost entirely conical. They begin with a conical lead-pipe, they are cylindrical through the tuning section, and then the whole rest of the tubing (about 6 ft 4in) is conical.
I have found this with several "bass trumpets", that they are mostly conical.
That makes them tenor or baritone cornets in my opinion, and they play like cornets! The tone is dark, the partials close-together, the flexibilities like a greased weasel which is very much unlike a cylindrical instrument.
I have played what I consider to be real bass trumpets, and by contrast their tone is crisp, resonant and trumpet-like. They are also cylindrical horns.
It is not a tenor horn, guys. The bell is not much bigger than a standard trumpet and the sound is nothing like Bb tenor horns, baritones, euphoniums, etc.
These horns are often referred to as tenor trumpets, reserving the bass connotation for the horns with a trombone-size bell that are usually in C and often have four valves.
There is a contrabass trumpet that is in a lower key again, F or Eb.
Conn and a few other companies used to make an alto cornet in low F or Eb, so calling horns like this tenor cornets would be apt, I think.
Again, the alto cornets have a bell the same size as a Bb cornet or only slightly larger. The Eb tenor (alto) horn is also often referred to as an alto cornet, especially in Europe, and many resources do list the Saxhorns as a family of cornets, but this is erronious- Saxhorns are not cornets. They are between cornets and true flugelhorns and are a taxonomic off-shoot of the bugle family (which is another reason why bugles are historically significant, BTW).
There sure seems to be an utter lack of standardisation of bass trumpets! Every model I have looked at seems to be different from every other version. Some are almost entirely cylindrical, many are a liberal mix of profiles, and horns like mine are almost entirely conical.
The proof of the pudding seems to come out in the high range- the 3rd octave, to be precise. Cylindrical, small-belled horns tend to sound distincly like regular trumpets in that range. My horn sounds like an old-style cornet up there with a big, fat, dark sound. No matter how hard I try for a martial sound, it sounds like I am going to break into the Coronation Street theme.
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