TromboneChat

So I was perusing the listings on Reverb for fun, and I found a listing for a King 2b that was listed as being “silver-plated”. What got my attention though was tuning slide and the inside of the bell are both gold-wash and I thought oh it must be a Silversonic. But the bell clearly is marked as a Liberty - no mention of sterling silver. I’ve never seen a plated King with gold wash accents. Anybody else have one or have seen one before?

Also it got me wondering, how do the silver-plated horns play compared to the SS and the brass horns?

Before the advent of lacquer spray guns (around the 1920s) most trombones were either raw brass or silver plated. So a lot of the very old top end trombones were silver plated.

Silver plating is much thinner than lacquer and thus the instruments tend to play a little brighter (although this difference is very subtle and could easily be missed by most of us mortals). Many think removing the lacquer from a brass instrument makes it more responsive. Again, a very subtle difference.

Tuning slide probably isn’t original, i think liberty’s had those 3 piece counterweights. The slide grip just looks like brass that probably wore off a bit and someone just buffed the rest off. Bell is a mystery

The bell doesn't have a sterling hallmark or refer to "SilverSonic", so it's almost certainly silver plated rather than a sterling bell. If my memory is working right today, the gold wash was part of the top trim level in the HN White era. Full gold-plate was a special order option.

This example has a two-piece counterweight which would date it in the 70s rather than the 60s. A 70s date would also argue against a silver bell. When the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market, HN White stopped making silver belled instruments (and in fact, a lot of SilverSonics ended up being scrapped).