Re: Nirschel BBb 5th valve 6/4 I have ?'s!


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Posted by Rick Denney on October 24, 2001 at 13:09:42:

In Reply to: Nirschel BBb 5th valve 6/4 I have ?'s! posted by John S on October 24, 2001 at 12:52:12:

You may be the only person who owns one, so you may have to make do with answers that don't apply to your specific horn. Do you have pictures you could post? Is it like the Nirschl/York CC, or is it more like a Kaiserbass?

Lots of folks report that smaller mouthpieces seem to work well on larger horns (though smaller doesn't necessarily mean more restricted). Jay Bertolet reports good success with a Laskey 30H on his Nirschl 6/4 CC. This is a helleberg-style mouthpiece, and not of huge proportions. But mouthpieces are a personal thing. I wasn't as impressed with the Laskey when I tried it on my 5/4 York Master, and I didn't find the best combination of features until I spent some time with Doug Elliott, putting together the best combination of rim, cup, and shank. Even then, we used a simple Conn Helleberg as the basis of comparison. My temptation would be to start with a hellebergish mouthpiece and go from there.

As to playing quietly, when you figure that out, let me know how you did it. Every report I've ever heard concerning the better York copies (and the originals) is that you have to relax and let the horn do the work. You may have to figure out what that means to you--I'm barely starting to understand what it means to me.

For the fifth valve, it depends on how it is configured. The Nirschl CC fifth valve is a flat whole step, and I assume the BBb is the same way. If so, I would begin with the following combinations, starting at low F and going down from there:

F - 4
E - 24
Eb- 45
D - 234
Db- 345
C - 1345
B - 12345
Bb- open pedal

The farther down you go, the more approximate these are, and you have to do some experimentation to find the combinations that provide the best tuning.

Rick "wishing he had these problems to solve" Denney


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