Cut bell natural horn from Cleveland Musical Instrument Company bell

This cut bell natural horn is built around a silver plated 1942 Cleveland Musical Instruments Company bell.  The horn corpus reuses the entire bell tail and flare, bell brace, plus the original bell branch.  All the other tubing, braces and bell ring (Alexander compatible) were fabricated here at Matt's Custom Horns using new materials–all bare brass.  This horn has the following crooks:  G, Eb-master crooks as well as ½-step and 1-step couplers.  The horn also has a center-pull tuning slide.  The horn will be sold with its original 10 ½ bell flare and a full sized, raw yellow brass bell flare (which may be customized for additional cost).

The bell engraving indicates Cleveland Musical Instrument Company inside a very bold angular hand engraved banner.  Although the original bell flare is only 10-½ inches, the bell tail is bent to a similar diameter as a modern single F-horn.  Modern full sized bell flares fit perfectly, look appropriate and sound great.  Although I don’t have the instrument’s original serial number, its twin has etched in the bell a reference to 1942.  The bell throat is medium size and will be fairly easy to cover with various hand positions.

The silver coating is quite worn and heavily tarnished.  Some of the tarnish has been removed from the bell exterior and bell branch to improve the strength of new solder joints.  The tarnish can be removed and the horn brought to an attractive shine if you wish, although it will always evince a well used instrument.  I think the instrument shows great character in its current clean but unpolished state, mixing the silver coated original bell with bare brass new tubing, crooks and braces.  The little dings and dents that remain in the bell tail from the straightening effort are a reminder that it has had a rich and long life, likely as part of a school or community instrument program.

This horn will play and respond similarly to horns by Stohr, which were popular in the 19th century and used for performances of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven.  Using this specific vintage horn bell, yields a horn sound that can range from soft and mellow to quite brassy and aggressive.  The horn has approximately 0.440-in bore, somewhat small, with long slow tapers in the master crooks; the resulting horn is easy to play and pleasing to hear.  Hand stopping is easily accomplished, with a quick response, broad range of tone colors, and good intonation.  The crook inlet is sized to accept a modern mouthpiece.  It produces a brilliant clear sound in the shorter horns, a rounder fuller sound in the longer horns.  It speaks well in all the dynamic ranges and should be an enjoyable horn for many more years.  Additional crooks and or couplers for this horn can always be made in the future if one desires additional keys.

The serial number of this fixed bell natural horn is:  NH 26-001

(Note, the customized bells in the pictures are illustrative and not included unless specifically requested.  The sales price will be adjusted accordingly--and will still be a great deal!)

(Note 2:  dog not included)