WBocals

Mala tempora currunt, bonum dulcinum advenit.

Bass Dulcian 466 hz after Berlin.
Maple wood by Rivolta Woods, treated with linseed oil, finished with dewaxed shellac.
A burnt colour, for burning passions; I myself burn with the desire for my client to experience it.
Andrew's friends had perhaps already guessed 😉

Today, Emma and I finally finished a long and complex restoration involving challenging reconstructions of some parts of a semi-contrabassoon, undoubtedly of Austrian origin from the 19th century.

The instrument arrived at the workshop without its end piece, but after careful observation and thanks to the availability of a similar instrument from the Palazzo Correr Museum in Venice, we were able to measure and reconstruct the two crooks (special thanks to Claudio Canevari).

In Leipzig (UL MIM 1401, Universität Leipzig, Musikinstrumentenmuseum) I found an instrument stamped "HAMMIG / WIEN" with similar characteristics (photo in the documentation below).

The work also required the reconstruction of the A flat key and its saddle, and the E flat key on the long body.

Very interesting, and worthy of study for the various similar anonymous contrabassoons, the absolute similarity of the boot of this semi-contrabassoon with the boot of the contrabassoon by Tauber preserved in the museum of the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory of Music in Naples, which I restored in 2010 (see photo of our anonymous boot superimposed on the 1:1 print of the photo of the Tauber boot in Naples).

From the initial tests carried out, the reconstructed instrument appears to play at 440 Hz with the lowest note being D1.