By about 1867 the saxotromba was no longer being used by the French military,[2] but specimens of various sizes continued to be manufactured until the early decades of the twentieth century, during which time the instrument made sporadic appearances in the opera house, both in the pit and on stage.

[5] In Germany the instrument is known by the name Saxtromba; in France the term saxotromba is generally applied to another close relative, the Wagner tuba.

The cylinders referred to in the patent application were piston valves which allowed the player to lower the pitch of the instrument's natural or open harmonics by one or more semitones.

On 22 November 1845 Sax was granted French Patent 2306 for a "Musical instrument, called the saxotromba, whose principles of construction may by means of slight modifications, be applied to saxhorns, cornets, trumpets, and trombones".

[12] Throughout this period the saxotromba made occasional appearances in the opera houses of France, especially in the onstage banda at the Paris Opéra, of which Sax was musical director from 1847 until 1892.

[13] It did make at least one notable operatic appearance in the onstage banda of Camille Saint-Saëns' Henry VIII (1883), which includes parts for two tenor saxotrombas in E♭.

[14] The saxotromba was also at this time a regular member of many brass bands throughout Europe, though the instrument disappeared from the inventories of the French military in 1867.

Their tube, being more contracted, gives to the sound which it produces, a character more shrill, partaking at once of the quality of tone of the trumpet and of that of the bugle.

[17]A valve instrument of the trumpet family having a narrow tube and the quality of whose tone is less delicate than that of the horn and more refined than that of the saxhorn.

[24] Kastner (1848) includes an image of seven different sizes of saxotromba, all of them with vertical bells: Of the five original saxhorns, only the bass was a whole-tube instrument capable of sounding its fundamental tone (or first harmonic).

The narrower bore of the saxotrombas, however, meant that all members of this family were half-tube instruments (like the trumpets and cornets), whose natural downward ranges extended only as far as the second harmonic.

It was constructed in such a way that the column of air inside the instrument was capable of vibrating at a number of different pitches that corresponded to the notes of the harmonic series.

[27] The seventh harmonic was too much out of tune to be lipped; this partial was generally avoided by trumpeters and cornet players after the introduction of valves.

In the early nineteenth century, when four valves were applied to a half-tube instrument they generally lowered the pitch of a natural harmonic by two, one, three and five semitones respectively.

It should be remembered that the fundamentals (shown here at their sounding pitches) were not available: In November 1853, the German composer Richard Wagner began the composition of the first of his Ring operas, Das Rheingold.

Nevertheless, we can deduce from Wagner's initial plan that one of the early saxotrombas was pitched in E♭, was equipped with four piston valves, and had a compass that was presumably capable of playing the bass trumpet part in Das Rheingold (which is notated throughout for an instrument in E♭, sounding a major sixth lower than written).

This four-valved saxotromba in E♭ presumably corresponded to the tenor saxhorn, whose sounding range according to Berlioz ran from A2 to G5, thus encompassing the bass trumpet part in Das Rheingold.

[35] By taking accurate measurements of extant instruments, Mitroulia has concluded that "Sax's plan for creating two distinct complete families of brasses, the saxhorns and the saxotrombas, never came into realization.