The guy who is selling it claims it is a F french horn by the brand amati.
Apparently, the name Amati regards to an old brass and woodwind crafters from the barouque period. So there are different companies using the same name now.
The main one is a Czech republic company, that also produces mellophones, which look a lot more like this instrument than a french horn.
I live in southern Brazil, so there’s no information, recordings or classified sales available around.
After WWII all Czech brass manufacturers were nationalized by the government under the Amati name. The region was full of small manufacturers dating back to the late 1800’s.
It looks like the corhoorn (E-flat horn), but the valves are on the wrong side of the instrument.
So this is a horn which has to be played with the left hand.
The difference between French horns and other brasses is that their tubing is twice (F, Eb) or 1.5 times (Bb) the length of that of other brasses of the same pitch, as they use a different partial (4th or 3rd respectively) than the others (who use the 2nd) as their "home C".
So the Bb horn is as long as a tenor trombone, and the F horn is the same length as an F tuba.
Some of the guitar making companies also produce brass and woodwinds, but those can be very shitty.
The biggest and most traditional company, that produces just brass and woodwinds, is called Weril.
I have this pocket trumpet and a alto sax (wrong sub for this one haha), both from the 90s.
They manufacutred all ends of instruments, but most of them are very well-built and easy to find online.
Ebay is not that popular around here. So ir you’re interested in Brazilian instruments, i suggest looking in facebook marketplace or at a site called OLX (disatatchment-sales kind of site).
Dollar is worth about 6x our currency, so it can be pretty cheap to get those. Like, the instrument + import + taxes would be around 200-300 U$D for most line, middle-end instruments.
Most of those instruments were played by church and military musicians, so its more common to find them abandoned, rusty, dusty and lacking general care than actually beaten up by night gigs.
Hope it shines some light on Brazilian instruments!
This is absolutely not a mellophone, whatever people are saying, there is far too much tubing for that. This is either A: what the seller says, an F horn (12’), or B: a ballad horn in C (8’). If it takes a horn mouthpiece, it’s a horn, if it takes a cornet shank mellophone mouthpiece, it’s a ballad horn
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u/Finetales 14d ago
It is actually a French horn, single F. Piston valve French horns are rare, but do exist.