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Re: Lyrique 576

Author: shmuelyosef
Date: 2017-04-19 05:46

Solid chrome is not a particularly good engineering material and is quite expensive. Stainless steel is pretty miserable to CNC in complex shapes, does not cast well, and is very difficult to braze/weld in unusual geometries. Brass is a wonderful material in these respects. Note that both stainless steel and brass are 'synthetic materials' in that they are made by mixing a variety of metals according to recipes (which vary according to the desired 'properties'...hardness, bendability or "yield modulus", etc). Stainless steel can have a yield modulus up to twice that of brass (i.e twice as much force required to deform an identical part made of brass). This is great until you want to adjust the key positions on your horn...which is often done in final assembly. Also, if your horn gets damaged, the repair often involves bending, as does fitting pads of slightly different thickness. As many of us who have owned quality horns made of the right kind of brass, there is a modulus where the keys don't bend from playing at all, but can still be bent with a reasonable set of pliers and levers...such brass recipes exist, and with perfectly reasonable sense and quality control can be obtained to make instrument keywork from. Many vendors buy a cheaper grade which generally means the properties are less well-controlled. If they get a lower-yield material, they just go ahead and use it anyways. High quality vendors order material to specification and measure incoming...this is part of the additional price you pay for the product.

An interesting point...there was a long time where 'student' horns were made with nickel silver keywork, as it was assumed that they would abuse their instruments, but didn't care about customization or fine tuned regulation. HN White (King Musical Instruments) used nickel silver keywork on all their instruments into the 60s after Seeburg bought them out. The King Super 20s are notorious for being a real pain to get regulated well (I used to specialize in getting these perfect) but once you got them right, nothing changed until the next repad. Now student horns use the cheapest brass and often this is the softest (lowest yield) so they constantly need attention...hmmm

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Lyrique 576 new

GenEric

2017-03-23 09:47