What are the major differences in the brass instruments of today compared to fifty years ago?
Vincent Bach put the modern trumpet on the map. The horn evolved quickly when he got hold of it. The modern trumpet isn’t that much different than what he was doing in 1945, but the machining is better, the measuring is better, and fitting a piston into a casing with zero tolerance is easily achieved. Fifty years ago, for instance, it was virtually impossible to bend a tube without it going out of round. Today this is not a problem. Another revolution in brass instrument manufacturing occurred in the 1980’s, when Yamaha put lots of money into computer design. Today we can accurately predict the effect of moving a brace or changing the taper of a leadpipe. There is something to watch out for in the industry, though: sometimes the importance of design seems to override the importance of materials, which can create other problems. Q: Such as the quality of brass used? Is the brass of today as good as the brass of fifty years ago? A: Brass is a very general term; there are hundreds of diff
