Posted by John Swensen on July 17, 2000 at 18:31:48:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Humorous Post!!! posted by Jay Bertolet on July 17, 2000 at 17:58:33:
Jay,
In the interest in helping out a hobbiest, I can say that I am certain that standard double French horns are about 12 feet long on the F side, about 9 feet long on the Bb side. In the U.S., it is standard practice to configure the thumb key on double horns to shorten the horn and engage the Bb side when the key is depressed (the opposite of the fourth valve behavior of a Bb Euphonium), but in England, the valve is sometimes configured so that the horn is in Bb with the key up, descending to F when the thumb key is depressed (my band director got his Paxman triple horn back from the factory that way). In that sense, double horns could be considered equivalent to Euphoniums in terms of fundamental pitches.
Descant F horns (the shortest "side" of triple horns) are about 6 feet long, or half the length of an F tuba.