Another factory tour completed!

[sunburstbasser]

Last week I spent some time in Tulsa visiting the Calicchio factory and seeing how they do things. I was very impressed by how laid-back it seemed compared to Kanstul's factory, and to an extent Schilke's. John Duda is a fun guy to talk to, and just watching him work was fascinating. He showed me how the knuckle the bell bow connects to the valves needs to be gapless, for instance. He said Calicchio is making about 20 horns a month now, and that the flugal horn has really been popular.

 

Dave Johnson, sales guy, led my tour. Calicchio doesn't have a showroom or a collection of horns to play, but Dave owns one of each of the three different bell sizes he let me try. He likes the medium bore, which made it a little odd to play for me. One of his horns is an experiment horn, a 2 bell with a second leadpipe soldered on to what I think he said was a 2 originally. He also plays the shallowest mouthpiece I've ever seen, a Greg Black, and hearing him warm-up was downright scary.

 

The coolest horn was one of Duda's personal ones. During the Monette sheet-metal horn craze a few years back he built a horn out of the less desirable parts they had, with lots of "stuff" on it, and a ball in the middle of the tuning slide brace. That ball was connected to a rod on the valves by a chain, and the whole thing was removable so you could smack the guy next to you if he said something you didn't like!

 

Tulsa Band had a pair of Calicchios in that I played, a ML and a large. The Large bore was a 3/7 I think, and really knocked me out. I preferred it over the other one, an R32. What a powerful sound!

 

Part of the reason I went down was to ask about working for Duda. Manufacturing is what I want to do after college, and he said to give him a call before I get out. That really made my day.

 

So yeah, add Calicchio to the list of things I'll whore out now.

[MarkZ]

Check out the latest issue of Downbeat with Freddie Hubbard on the cover. He plays a Calicchio copper bell, which looks like my Kanstul 1500 but has a reverse pipe and is all copper and brass (no silver/nickel parts). If I didn't have the 1500, I'd be all over something like that.

 

How large was the L bore? .470? That would probably kill me over the course of the night. .459/460 is plenty for me.

[jonathan_matos5]

you were in tulsa and you didn't say hi:mad:

[sunburstbasser]

Didn't have time.

 

Calicchio's bores are .453, .460, and .468. They actually had an all-copper horn in for repair, since you mentioned those. At Tulsa Band I tried a Kanstul 1601 and really dug it; that'd be a perfect horn for combo jazz. The Cali flugal is also close to the Kanstul, with a copper bell, but with some of their own touches.

 

I don't think I said earlier, John Duda wants to break into the legit market, and is trying to design a C trumpet. One of their custom orders is actually a piccolo trumpet! They had a half-complete model hanging above his desk.

 

And Duda shares about the same opinion on Zig as you do, Mark.