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
Michael Rath Trombones finished at Merton in 1981 and for the next nine years served an apprenticeship with Paxman Musical Instruments, a Covent Garden-based manufacturer of (French) horns. Himself a brass player – he began on tuba at age 11 – Rath opened his own brass instrument shop in West Yorkshire, specializing in repairs and customization. His clientele grew to include professional musicians, particularly trombonists, from throughout Europe. In 1995, British jazz trombonist Mark Nightingale asked Rath to create a bespoke instrument. Completed in 1996 after nearly two years of prototyping, this tenor instrument became the first Rath trombone. With tenor trombones in