The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family and an essential component of most classical and jazz bands. It consists of a cylindrical tube bent into an elongated “S” shape with a telescoping slide mechanism that varies the length of the instrument to change the pitch. Pictured overleaf is a Rath 400 Tenor custom trombone. The wide-spread use and notoriety of Rath trombones over the past ten years has been meteoric particularly amongst jazz players.
Rath’s innovation was to take the most vibrant manufacturing traditions and combined them with modular components thus creating mass customisation. A concept that architecture and construction need to but have not yet fully embraced.