Contempora Bass Trombones

I was the head tour guide at the Olds factory in Fullerton from 1967-1971 while a student at Cal-State Fullerton. During my time in Fullerton I did some gigs with Jeff Reynolds (prior to his L.A. Philharmonic days). One time we got together he was showing me his Bach to which he had added a second valve in Eb. (Mine was still in E, of course.) He explained how much better it was than the E and what he said made a lot of sense, so the next time I went to the factory to give a tour, I went into Zig Kanstul’s office (which was right off the room where we began the tours) and told him what Jeff had told me and asked if it would be possible to get an Eb extension for my Reynolds. He made light of it but said, “Yeah, sure.” Over the next several months I’d poke my head into his office and asked how the project was coming. He’d shrug it off with an “I’m working on it.”

Finally, one day I was getting ready to start a tour and he stuck his head out of his door and asked me to stop by when I was done. I did, of course, and it turned out that since I approached him with the extension idea, they had received letters from three owners of TO-01s (if I remember correctly, one was from New Orleans, one from St. Louis, and the other from somewhere in Ohio) who wanted the same thing, except they had all asked for extensions in D. So now it wasn’t such a crazy idea after all and he was ready to get serious about it. We played with some ideas and tried to come up with something that could be in either Eb or D so that all of us could have what we had asked for. It just wouldn’t work, so he decided to produce a run of twelve D extensions and offered me one of them. I accepted, of course. Then he picked up an experiment in Eb and said he’d fix it up for me if I wanted it, otherwise it was going into the trash. Well, the Eb was what I wanted in the first place, so I said I’d like it. Therefore I ended up with the only factory-made Eb extension and one of only twelve factory-made D extensions.

Zig’s extensions were really a very simple design. The E tuning slide was pulled out, the extension angled around the F tubing above it, then the tuning slide was inserted into the end. But because of the need to angle around, that part of the extension length was unavailable to be used as extra tuning slide length, so there just wasn’t enough to pull the Eb down to D. If it had been available, he probably would have just made a separate tuning slide for it that would be left in for Eb and pulled for D. (And I wouldn’t have had the Db and C modes, so I’m glad it worked out that way.)

So he ended up having to make a separate D extension to satisfy those who wanted the D. The D, of course, is just a longer version of the Eb extension. And by using the original E tuning slide, no additional extra parts were needed. And the case design allowed the extension to be left on the instrument when packing the horn up. The design also allowed the two extensions to fit into each other and become the Db and C configurations. So unless I was using the horn in its original setting, I only had one “extra” piece kicking around. At first it tended to be the D extension, then soon it became the Eb most of the time.

I started off using the Eb extension most of the time and playing around with the D some. Eventually I went to using the D most of the time. Then one day while sitting in orchestra rehearsal and doing what trombone players usually do during orchestra rehearsals (twiddling thumbs), it struck me that the extensions would fit into each other. So I picked up the bone and extensions, went out into the hall, pulled the tuning slide out of the D, stuck the Eb into it, then put the tuning slide into the Eb, and I had a Db extension! Then I pulled the slides as far as they would go: C!! So I can have that second valve in E, Eb, D, Db, or C - the most versatile dependent second valve anywhere. At least using factory-made parts. I did a studio gig in Dallas shortly before I got [my Olds P-24G] during which I used each variation on at least one piece except maybe the E. Sometimes one just worked better than the others because of the way that particular number lay.

In the early ’70s, I was in Chicago and stopped by Schilke to say ‘hi’ to Phil Warsip and look around a bit. The old man came out, all excited, and said “you have to play my new bass trombone.” He brought out a stacked Bb-F-E horn that looked for all the world like an exact copy of a double rotor Reynolds Contempora, roller linkages, dependent E branch, Reynolds pattern ferrules and all, except that it had a huge bell - a lot bigger than my Holton. I know it had a leaderpipe because my mouthpiece fit the receiver. But who knows how long or short it may have been. It was clearly an orchestral horn: you had to kind of boss it around to get what you wanted. After I’d played it for a while, he asked me what I thought of it. Somewhere in the first two sentences I mentioned its striking resemblance to the Reynolds. He snatched the horn from me and stomped off. Warsip just kind of smiled and said that I’d pay for that down the road.