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Many thanks to Joe Stewart from Rayburn, who has sent me a Rath R10 .500 bore to play. I wanted to post with some early general impressions.
The horn is beautiful - a 7 1/2" red brass bell, nickel silver slide.
The slide is fantastic - as good as any slide I have ever tried. I cleaned it yesterday at work and did "my" treatment of medium coating of Superslick to the inside of the outer and a light coating of formula 3 oil to the outside of the inner, and it was unbelievably free and easy with just the perfect mixture of speed and slick (you know how some slides are fast for big throws and some are slick for fine tuning - well few of them are both).
Construction of the horn is absolutely superior. The solders are all perfect, but moreover the bracing and
gauge of the critical areas is beefed-up. Very impressive. The friction fitting where the slide inserts into the bell is a little tight, but I feel like that will loosen as the horn breaks in. I believe the tight fit combined with the thumbscrew clamp makes the horn vibrate like a single piece, so I really appreciate that.
Right off the bat, there is a very good deal of difference between my King 2B Jiggs Whigham model and this instrument. One of the greatest strengths and biggest weakness of the Jiggs is that the metal of the bell is so lightweight. It makes for an incredibly responsive horn, but the metal dents if you sneeze. The rose-brass metal in the Rath is more substantial, and seems to have more rigidity. The lacq finish seems to be a fairly light treatment; the resulting finish is quite beautiful.
Playing-wise: of course I withhold judgment on a horn until my body begins to adapt to it. But some early impressions:
- Much rounder sound than the Jiggs. Still feels like a jazz horn, but the core is more substantial, the overall sound substantially darker
- Horn is fairly resonant and very stable in the low :bassclef: :line2: flat partial. A very good sound in the lower register, especially in view of the mouthpiece I'm playing which is about the size of an 11C.
- A little dead from :bassclef: :line2: natural to :line3: flat. Of course those aren't notes I play a whole lot so maybe it's me.
- And then it has this range from :bassclef: :space3: flat to :trebleclef: :line1: where the horn just sings! If I play it anywhere in that range the horn resonates big time. This is the money range on this horn for sure.
- Middle-upper reg has a very neutral feel. I have to work a little harder on this horn as compared to the Jiggs, but then again I think it could be said that the Jiggs will basically hand you a dead-blow fat solid high F any time you bat your eyes at it. So based on the sound I can't really characterize a bit of additional work on this horn as a drawback per se. Of course I need to develop a little on this horn before I can evaluate it properly.
I'll hold off on more comments about the blow, feel , sound and projection until I've had a chance to grow into it, but I just wanted to give a big thanks to Joe and Michael Rath Trombones for giving me the opportunity to spend a little time with this great instrument.
©2003, Joe Jackson. All rights reserved.