Vienna horn in F (1,780 g)
The Engelbert Schmid Vienna horn is not a particularly light instrument. As a Vienna horn is a single horn, light weight is not as important as with rotary-valve double or triple horns.
Fast valves
What is extremely important, however, is the moving mass of the valves, i.e. the total weight of the levers and the Vienna valves. Engelbert Schmid has succeeded in reducing this moving mass to below 50% of the usual weight. This means that there is no sideways knocking at all when the valves strike, and the valves are absolutely quick, very similar to good rotary valves. Suddenly this Vienna horn is a technically agile instrument – with the famous smooth slurs of the “Wiener Pumpen”! Now the Vienna horn can be established as a solo instrument!
Water keys with a double function
We recommend 5 water keys. 3 of them act as so-called “tone holes”, which are connected to the thumb lever for easy operation. With them you can hit all the top notes with absolute security! With the same thumb lever, connected to a total of 3 water keys (2 on the F crook, 1 on the second leadpipe), you can empty practically the whole horn within a few seconds. So 3 of the 5 water keys have a double function – as water key and as tone hole.
Two horns in one
Thanks to the computer-calculated bore profile, the intonation is ideal and there are only healthy notes on this horn. And you have two single horns: a Vienna horn in F and a Vienna horn in Bb.
All valve slides have intermediate pieces. If you take them out and use the Bb crook, the Vienna horn is in Bb! The Bb crook has a good length for a long conical leadpipe, so the Bb side is also a Vienna horn with very good intonation and sound. So you have two full-fledged horns in one! By the way, the lengths of the two crooks and of the corpus are identical to those of classical natural horns. So you can use this Vienna horn as a natural horn with all the crooks of your natural horn.
Vienna horn in Bb (1,600 g)