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How do we make sure the tooling for G bugles is never lost?


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Interesting. Is this pretty much all that makes a G soprano sound so different from a Bb trumpet when played by the same group of players in a drum corps setting?

emphasis added

Funny you should say so. Just this week I was listening a tune from a collection of Phantom ballads and admiring the G-bugle sound. Except that when I went back to check the track, I'd been listening to the Bb Regiment.

Not that the limitation of my ear should alter your dream. Best of luck with the bugles. Better luck on the economics and the ensembles.

HH

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It might be interesting to note that the manufactures responsible for "brainwashing" the music educators no longer (or did not ever) make G bugles.

There is no need to throw out obsolete tooling - keeping track of unused or rarely-used tooling is important, however. Manufacturing these parts in small quantities is expensive.

Kanstul is now the only manufacturer still willing to make G bugles.

False....Kanstul is not the only manufacturer making G-Bugles.....DEG/Dynasty still has a full line of G-Bugles, and they even have selected parts still available for the old 2 valve bugles.

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False....Kanstul is not the only manufacturer making G-Bugles.....DEG/Dynasty still has a full line of G-Bugles, and they even have selected parts still available for the old 2 valve bugles.

They have a full line of G bugles....does that mean they still make them, or they still have a bunch in a warehouse somewhere? :devil:

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False....Kanstul is not the only manufacturer making G-Bugles.....DEG/Dynasty still has a full line of G-Bugles, and they even have selected parts still available for the old 2 valve bugles.

Maybe I should have put it this way: If you contact Dynasty, what is the estimated lead time for a G bugle? It would not surprise me if you would be quoted several months to a year or more. I'm certain, however, that were one to order a single horn or even a set from Kanstul that the estimated lead time is only a matter of a few weeks.

Kanstul is willing to build G bugles for those who want them. We still build them in California and parts are still readily available.

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Some day, when it would be economically viable to do so, I'd like a start a group of ensembles that uses three-valved G horns. Since these instruments are virtually no longer produced and will soon be unobtainable, do we run the risk of never being able to produce these instruments again at a time when it is appropriate?

Put them in a museum where they belong alongside other instruments that we look back on and chuckle, and from time to time, play just for the novelty value. You could set up a whole exhibit that includes:

G Bugles

Key'd bugles

Metal Clarinets

Brass Vamp Horn

Valved Trombone

Natural Horn

Marching Tenor Horns

The Glass Armonica

To name a few. I'd pay to see that exhibit. Sounds fun. Especially if it were interactive.

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Put them in a museum where they belong alongside other instruments that we look back on and chuckle, and from time to time, play just for the novelty value. You could set up a whole exhibit that includes:

G Bugles

Key'd bugles

Metal Clarinets

Brass Vamp Horn

Valved Trombone

Natural Horn

Marching Tenor Horns

The Glass Armonica

To name a few. I'd pay to see that exhibit. Sounds fun. Especially if it were interactive.

But how would Hrothy provide a TRUE drum corps experience to his future corps? Oh wait...

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All of the factors you can name contribute to the difference. All I'm saying is that if you take an instrument designed to maximize the length of a Bb tube (at a desired quality of sound and intonation), and then do nothing but make the tube longer, the resulting overtone series will not line up as it did on the Bb tube. You have to make other adjustments to bore/MP/bell/rate of bore increase.

From here, we can notice that trombones are DESIGNED to do exactly what I'm complaining about! That is, a trombone is a real-time "change of length" instrument, where the part that's changing is CONSISTENT in its construction. First of all (I play trombone), the trombone DOES have slight issues with this is the slide goes out...everything in the overtone series gets more unpredictable, to the point where the higher partials are practically useless. (That's OK, because the higher ones exist as lower partials in higher positions...just like long vs short valve combination) Trombonist's compensate for this by using the infinite tuning slide in front of their faces. Valve players have no such luxury, and it makes them tired.

A trombone is a cylindrical instrument. Bugles are conical! (At least, that's what we're told, lol)

Now we play Trumpets. Good ol' band-o-matic trumpets, and we've stopped pretending that "soprano bugles" are bugles.

SOME manufacturers DID try to make them conical, and those were rejected as not "projecting enough." (I have no examples; only recollections of conversations here and there, 15-20 years ago. I played low brass, which had clear conical tone [tuas/euphs] and less-conical tone [bari].)

Recall that "screech soprano playing" was practically a requirement BITD. Do you think they could get that sound on a Cornet? (A true[r] bugle!) HECK NO. Therefore, "soprano bugles" were NEVER BUGLES AT ALL.

Conclusion: Soprano bugles BITD had all of the problems of a trombonist trying to play their entire scale as if the slide were extended from 4th to 7th position.

You sir, may officially refer to yourself as, "Brass Expert"!

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It might be interesting to note that the manufactures responsible for "brainwashing" the music educators no longer (or did not ever) make G bugles.

Brainwashing would be the correct term . You might also include that to the general DCI audience now that thinks that Bugles are so horrible.

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