1 MYERS/TOMES 107 PCB CORNETS AND WEBSTER TRUMPETS: RUDALL CARTE S PATENT CONICAL BORE BRASSWIND Arnold Myers and Frank Tomes Based on a paper read at the joint Galpin Society / Historic Brass Society Symposium, Edinburgh, June Surviving brass instruments from the firm of Rudall Carte (famous for flutes) are remarkable for their fine workmanship. The attention to detail in some cases is taken so far as the use of tuning-slide tubing of nine or ten different diameters. In this paper their patent of and some of their previous and subsequent brass instruments are examined from historical, technological and acoustical viewpoints.
Many of the brasswind developments in the late 19th century were intended to improve valve design, reducing the number and severity of the bends in the windway. Other inventions of the same period were concerned with intonation, such as Boosey & Co s compensating pistons, Besson s Victory Compensator-Transpositor Cornet of 1893, and Besson s Enharmonic Patent models from Rudall Carte had a different aim with their Patent Conical Bore: the equalization of tone and response between open and valved notes. Rudall Carte s 1903 (PCB) brasswind Most of Rudall Carte s production of brasswind, clarinets, and saxophones, and many of the flutes, were sold for military use. In 1896 the firm tried to increase its share of the brass band market: in the Brass Band News for October they advertised that they had made recent enlargements to their Brass Factory and offered a cornet with patent piston water key and short action pistons for euphoniums and basses.
The early logbooks of the Rudall (Rose, Carte, & Co.) company are lost, making exact dating of flutes made before 1869 somewhat speculative. Robert Bigio.
These short-action pistons had elliptical cross-section wind-ways so that the piston travel could be reduced; not many examples appear to have been made. In the March 1904 edition of Brass Band News they resumed advertising, claiming that they had been established for 150 years but making no mention of new models. However, from the May 1904 issue and in subsequent monthly issues they advertised the Conical Bore Cornet. In February 1905 they advertised the Great success of the PCB (Patent Conical Bore) instruments, coupling them with the great cornet virtuoso Paris Chambers, and offering the other valved brass band instruments on the same principle. The surviving stock books of Rudall Carte give details of the entire production of PCB instruments (Appendix 1): a total of 423 were made between 1903 and 1933, more than half of them cornets and most of them in the first few years of the patent.
Production was never high compared with that of the big manufacturers such as Besson and Boosey. After a promising start with orders coming from the furthest parts of the British Empire, sales.
2 108 HISTORIC BRASS SOCIETY JOURNAL dwindled. There was a slight resurgence in the 1920s, particularly of trumpets, but the depression badly hit Rudall Carte along with other instrument makers. A proud tradition of brasswind making died with the production of the last batch of bugles in The stock books show that the instruments were virtually unsaleable in the 1930s some new instruments were sold as secondhand after lying on the shelf for years and the remaining brass instruments on the books were sold, with the firm, to Boosey & Hawkes during World War II. The PCB cornets were offered in a range of models: bore small, medium, or large; long model or short model; Bf only or with slide change to A (later also a quick-change rotary valve option), plain brass or silver-plated. Figures 1 and 2 show two of the cornet models. The surviving specimens are nearly all different, and even where the authors have examined two instruments of the same model from the same batch there are slight differences in tubing diameter.
As with Rudall Carte flutes, instruments were individually craftsman-made. The common feature of all the cornet models is that the windway goes from the mouthpipe via the main tuning-slide to the second valve, then to the first valve, then via the third valve to the bell. The short model has the A slide between the main tuning-slide and the 2nd valve; the long model has the A slide between the 1st and 3rd valves. Figure 1 Rudall Carte & Co. Patent Conical Bore Cornet No This is a short (Artists ) small bore model with A slide; Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments (2988). Bore: main tuning-slide; A slide; 2nd valve (?); 1st valve; 3rd valve. 3 MYERS/TOMES 109 The appellation Conical Bore derives from an incrementally increasing bore through the bows of the main and valve tuning-slides and the coquilles (valve passages), strictly speaking an alternation of cylindrical and expanding bore profiles.
The fully developed form with an A slide employs ten different diameters of tubing in the ten slide legs. The degree of conicity in the windway depends on the use of valves, and the difference between a PCB instrument and a conventional model is the more striking when the valves are actuated. Figure 4 shows the bore profiles of a PCB and a common cornet through their valves.
Playing tests have shown that the cornet is indeed very responsive and well in tune with two or three valves used in combinations. 257 PCB cornets were made. Fewer trumpets have survived than cornets.
Of the 120 made, the authors have had access only to five. It appears that the Bf trumpet design was modified between 1914 and 1921: a 1914 instrument, described in the stock book as a trumpet, now in the Bate Collection at the University of Oxford, has a bell not very different from cornet proportions; later trumpets ( ) such as that in Figure 3 have a narrower but more flared trumpet bell, a mouthpiece with trumpet cup (but cornet shank) and are stamped WEBSTER TRUMPET.
Webster was the craftsman employed by Rudall Carte to make brass instruments. According to Charles Morley 2, who worked for the firm from 1925 until 1939, Mr. Webster was an old man in 1925, and very old in He made whole instruments himself bells, valves, everything. He had a young assistant called Hellaby who did the rough work. Hellaby would probably have been liable for military service in 1939; otherwise he would have transferred with the rest of Rudall Carte staff to Boosey & Hawkes in 1943 on the take-over.
Figure 2 Rudall Carte & Co. Patent Conical Bore Cornet No This is a long (military) large bore model with A slide; Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments (619). Bore: main tuning-slide; 2nd valve; 1st valve; A slide; 3rd valve.