Frumpet

The Getzen model 383 Frumpet, or “French Horn Trumpet” as it was also marketed, is a unique alto brass instrument that can play extremely loud. It also accepts bass trombone mutes, and has decent valves and ergonomics.

That is everything good that can be said about it.

It was made from 1964 to 1985 and was another attempt at a marching instrument for French horn players. It has a .464” bore and plays in alto F or Eb, with the Eb slide playing a little better. It takes French horn mouthpieces, but the length and taper of the instrument are not an acoustic match for that and the result truly horrendous. It has shockingly bad intonation that makes the Conn 16E mellophonium seem amazing by comparison, and its anemic sound doesn’t make up for it. You can find them cheap on eBay, but they are painfully useless except to use as a base for a mildly interesting lamp.

UNLESS…

…you get it modified.

All that’s needed to turn the frumpet from an inconveniently-sized paperweight into a usable and interesting instrument is to swap the leadpipe for either an alto horn or trombone leadpipe. That way you can use bigger mouthpieces that actually work with the bore profile, eliminating the horrible intonation problems. If you take it a step further and also swap the weird bell for a small trombone bell, you have yourself a nice alto valve trombone. You can also lower it to C or Bb (with the new leadpipe/bell) and get a bass trumpet of sorts.

One thing that has not been tried yet to my knowledge is to keep the stock bell and horn leadpipe, but put a bunch of tubing on it to get it down to Bb or even low F, convert it to point up instead of out in front, and see how it works as the world’s jankiest Wagner tuba. I would very much like to try that.

Anyway, don’t buy a frumpet unless you plan to either turn it into a lamp, use it for parts or as soldering practice, or extensively modify it. And don’t spend more than about $100.