Hi all,

I’m curious if anyone that’s more nuts than me has ever weighed various counterweights by brand for means of comparison. With things like the trombonilizer (spelling?) and the defunct CL resistance balancer having many different weights, and thus effects, I’m curious what brands weigh what.

Do you know? Do you have the same ideas? Do you have a mythical 2lb brass ark counterweight?

Niche of a niche, but we are all here!

Last time I was shopping for a counterweight, Hickey's had weights for many of them in their listings.

Though the purpose of a counterweight is enhancing the balance of the instrument, adding mass anywhere on the horn changes the way it feels when played. It's worth experimenting with them if you have different weights. I have a bell that went from feeling good to absolutely great when I put a significantly heavier counterweight on it. (Started with an Edwards and switched to an old Conn weight.)

The problm you're going to run into is that the diameter of the crossbrace is different from manufacturer to manufacturer (and sometimes model to model). So whether one is x grams and one is y grams, you won't always easily fit a counterweight onto a different model making the comparison tricky at best.

For example, my Conn 4H has a smaller diameter crossbrace than the 18H I have, so when I put an 18H counterweight on it, I had to build a little tape shim so that it would fit. Obviously, if it had been the other way around, it wouldn't have worked at all. Although... I have had an Edwards counterweight that I mounted on a... Shires(?) by using bolts and wingnuts because the ID was bigger than the weight. I used locktite to make sure the wingnuts wouldn't fall off and have the weight slip off and dent he bell.

Rath counterweights are actually the most easily adjustable. Their default is piece of metal that slips onto the tuning slide and has two holes whereby various weighted nuts can be inserted. They offer a variety of weighed nuts, though I don't recall ever hearing of people experimenting with them unlike the Edwards harmonic pillars which is a similar concept, but in a different location and much more subtle amounts of weight.

If you really wanted to hone in on what various weights achieved, the Rath solution would be the obvious way to go IMO, though I have no idea if they fit on other makers horns though it doesn't appear that it would be difficult to do so.

[quote="Matt K"]The problm you're going to run into is that the diameter of the crossbrace is different from manufacturer to manufacturer (and sometimes model to model). So whether one is x grams and one is y grams, you won't always easily fit a counterweight onto a different model making the comparison tricky at best.[/quote]
If you want to experiment with a counterweight before running out and buying one, one way to do this is to get a spool of solder and wrap (or somehow hang) different amounts of the solder on your horn (and at different places). Or in place of solder you can use something like "Golf lead tape" that's easier to wrap on, available from Amazon. Who knows? You may be happy with $10 worth of lead tape instead of $100+ for a genuine trombone counterweight.

If you do decide to get a real counterweight, it can also be adjusted to the size of your crossbrace. If the channel in the counterweight is too small a diameter, then you can either drill (or file) it out a bit (I did this to my "generic" Hickey's counterweight); and if it's too big a diameter, then you can "sleeve" it with a piece of appropriately sized vinyl/plastic tubing put onto the crossbrace, or even just wrapping some Teflon plumber's tape on it (which also protects the brace from abrasion).

Weight is weight. It doesn't have to say "Conn" or "King" or "Olds" or "Getzen" or whatever on it. And there are some simple things you can do to make a weight fit appropriately.

I used a roll of lead tape to add extra counterweight to my straight tenor (and put a piece of clear tape over that so you can't touch the lead). If I were to do it again, I'd probably consider tungsten.