Saw this on EBay

https://www.ebay.com/itm/114665774049

H N White King with tuning in slide, I’ve never see that before. From the dents it looks silver plated. Just seemed interesting. Any guesses on how old?

Looks like the 1xxx series. I have the 1130 (large bore, TIS) but the brace for the tuning is different. This looks more like the Olds TIS brace.

You might want to browse in www.hnwhite.com to see if you can figure out which it is.

Age? Probably 1920s or 1930s.

Ah, from that site it looks closest to the symphony model based on the braces - it’s the only one they have pictured without the curved left hand brace. So it’s probably a .508 “large” bore. Neat - thanks for the tip.

Looks like these are more common than I thought! :shuffle:

Yes--as you can see on the H. N. White site, King made a complete line of TIS trombones in the early to mid 20's. In addition to tuning in the slide, all of these instruments had rather large bell throats in relation to their bore and bell diameters. By the later 1920's, King had dropped the TIS feature for all of the models except the Symphony and Bass models, and all of their trombones had more "normal" size throats. (Bruce, if I recall correctly from discussions on the old trombone forum years ago, yours is one of the slightly later Symphony models, with a larger bore and a more normal bell throat--correct?)

This particular instrument in the eBay listing above is indeed a "large bore" Symphony model (I confirmed the dimensions with the seller). I used to own one just like it--.508" bore, 8" bell, and an extremely large bell throat. Mutes designed for modern large-bore tenor trombones are far too small for it. The throat is at least as large as that of a modern bass trombone, if not bigger. I mean, seriously--it's huge.

King sold this same trombone with an F-attachment during this period as their "bass" trombone. Without the F-attachment (like this one, and the one I owned) it's very slide-heavy. I added a Kanstul clamp-on TIS counterweight (from the 1608ST) to mine.

With a "small bore" mouthpiece (12, 7c, etc.) it plays like a small bore trombone, with a rather warm sound and a very easy/effortless high register. With a "symphonic" size small shank mouthpiece (like a small-shank 5G or a Doug Elliott setup with a G or H cup and 4 or 5 shank) it has a very large, symphonic-type sound. It plays at least as "big" as a Bach 36, if not bigger.

It's not anything at all like a 3B.

The one I had is one of the few instruments I've owned that I regret selling (and that's saying something, given some of the instruments I've owned and sold over the years). This is the first one like it that I've seen since I sold mine 12 years ago--the smaller bore TIS models from this period show up much more frequently, and the later Symphony models with the larger bore and more normal throat were sold over a longer period than this version.

-Funkhoss

It’s really interesting how the proportions of the instruments have changed over the years. I think these bell sections are so fascinating, with the different ways they were trying to solve for the same sound blending issues we have today within sections.