TromboneChat

I've seen a lot of old Ambassadors that have one brace by the tuning slide. Looks like the brace on the tuning slide is missing vice the one at the tail of the bell. Is this a common mod or a model from the factory?

Thanks

I think the early ones came from the factory that way. Sometime in the late 50's they re-designed the Ambassador, adding the 2nd brace on the tuning slide, and changing the handgrip brace to a round one.
It may have coincided with the Olds move from L.A. to Fullerton.

I have an early Fullerton model. The tuning slide has a brace; there are no round braces anywhere on the horn.

Older Los Angeles Olds Ambassador trombones had no tuning slide brace. The counterweight was directly attached to the tuning slide crook.
Later versions (perhaps late 1950s, early 1960s?, Fullerton) added a tuning slide brace with a more standard placement of the counterweight on the brace.

There is one variant in between those two pictures—it looks like the first one, with the counterweight attached to the tuning slide crook, except it does have a tuning slide brace also, just below where the counterweight hangs.

Here’s an example on eBay: https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DCh ... g96BAgBEEc

Apparently the Ambassador (like many other Olds trombones) had lots of variants during its long life cycle!

To further confuse the issue...

I know one trombonist who has what was originally a "single-brace" Ambassador that was returned to the factory to have the second brace added. His is probably not the only one to receive that modification.

Thanks guys!