Marching brass 1980s and early 1990s, DEG Music Products commissioned Willson Brass of Switzerland to design a Euphonium bugle, and their design used a medium shank mouthpiece that is not regularly seen in the United States. The contrabass bugle, or "contra", is the bugle equivalent of a marching tuba and its variants (the sousaphone and helicon). This bugle was designed in the 1960s. The original design for a contrabass called for an instrument in CC (the equivalent tubing length of a CC tuba), carried in front of the marcher like the higher voices. This was quickly replaced with a shoulder carried variant
Brass instrument valve by Heinrich Stölzel in 1815) was an early variety. The piston valve found in the majority of valved brass instruments was invented in 1838 and patented in 1839. They are sometimes called Périnet valves after their inventor, François Périnet. They work by diverting air obliquely through ports in the stock of the valve so that a loop of tubing is included in the air stream, lowering the pitch. The stock of the valve is cylindrical and moves up and down through a larger cylindrical casing. The rotary valve works using a short circular plug housed in a larger cylindrical casing.