The trombone with 6 independent valves

If the name Sax (Adolphe Sax, 1814 - 1894) is still widely known to-day, it is due to his inventions that were a real sensation in the music world of the 19th century. Sax, a man with an ingenious mind, created several families of instruments, the most important of which are still in use nowadays: the saxophones (6 models) and the saxhorns (7 models). They had a revolutionary influence on all brass bands (especially on the military ones) of that day. Sax greatly improved the construction of brass instruments by carefully heeding the proportions between the main tube and the curved tubes, as well as the structure of the valves.

The combination of the system with 3 valves produced false tones for acoustic reasons, which the instrument makers in vain tried to eliminate. Sax corrected this defect mathematically (Saxtromba) by replacing the earlier combination by one with 3 extra valves. He also made instruments with 3 valves plus further resounding keys which he fixed near the bell. To reduce the weight of his instruments Sax placed the additional tubes in an ascending order. In 1842 he invented the independent valve. With this system each valve is worked separately, whereas with the old system the valves and additional tubes were complementary.

In 1852 the saxtrombone with 6 independent valves was born. To demonstrate its system and the new possibilities of the instrument, Sax constructed a trombone with 7 independent bells, which is conserved at the Dep. for Musical Instruments of the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels. The invention consists of a reunion of 7 tubes of graduated lengths, which causes the harmonic resonance of the 7 keys separated by a half tone.