[Trombone-l] Original Schilke Trombone

[Peter]

Hello Listers - 

Sometime back in the late 70s, Renn Schilke started thinking about trombones.  To make a long story short (and to be honest, I don’t know that much about the story!), he built a handful of custom trombones.  The first two were built for Gene Watt of the Canadian Brass, who came to Toledo in the Fall of 1979 for a concert.  As I was playing in the Toledo Symphony at the time, I went went to the concert and afterwards introduced myself to Gene.  Gene, being the consummate salesperson, insisted that I play his new, gold-plated custom-made Schilke trombone.  I did and thought it was a dream of an instrument and decided that I needed to have one.  The next day, I called Schilke and talked to Kerry Griffith, and arranged for them to put one together for me.  It came to me with the serial number “003” - I guess he had intended to make a bunch of them, but in the end, I think he finally produced five or six, and I believe Frank Crisafulli had at least one of them.  I don’t know any of this for certain and maybe there are others who know something of the history here.

The trombone is a large bore straight tenor - no f-attachment, and because Renn would never put lacquer on anything, it is silver plated. It is still in very good, if not excellent condition.  I’ve played this instrument on and off over the years.  Because its a bit of a lighter instrument, I did not use it much in the orchestra, preferring the sound of my Bach 42 there.  But it was great for solo performances, in the brass quintet and for small chamber orchestras.  I’ve also used it when playing second trombone for Mozart & Beethoven masses.  Given that I’m no longer playing and it is something of a collector’s item, I’m thinking that I should try to find it a good home.  

So I’m curious to know if there is any interest out there for it?  If so, please let me know off-list and we can discuss it further.  If anyone knows more of the history of Schilke’s early foray into trombone production around this time, I’d enjoy hearing it and perhaps others in the list would be interested as well.

Thanks very much!

Peter Pettit
PCPettit at gmail.com