A great cleaning breakthrough

[BigDub]

Eye popping cleaning..
I decided my Getzen Eterna, ( which other people would say looks like new to begin with ), needed a cleaning before I played a gig last night. I did a couple of things differently, kind of on the fly. Took one of my plastic 16 oz. containers from my painting ( artwork ) stuff, because it was wide enough to have the tuning slide sit in it to soak, along with first and third tuning slides. I used fairly hot water with a touch of Dawn dish detergent. The amato water keys really enjoy this and are very cooperative after this treatment. I also took the felts off all the valves and put all three in there to soak as well. I did the snake on any and all these after the soaking, snaked the lead pipe and any other areas I could get at with the warm to hot water and Dawn. Ran soapy water then clear. I mainly wanted to buff the exterior because it had gotten a little less than mirror like for my taste. I made my own buffer, like a jewelers buffing wheel which I attached to my drill. Amazing how well that worked.
Now here is the part that struck me. After all the years I have been playing trumpet, 55+, I have never experienced such a free blowing feeling and ease of play. It was that significant. I handed my horn to my buddy and told him to try it. He had the same experience, though he isn’t accustomed to my horn at all. Anyway, I never had such an immediate improvement to a 20 minute cleaning as this was.

[J. Jericho]

A clean horn is a happy horn.

[Shepherds_Crook]

Glad it worked = a noticeable difference! I am presuming that your Eterna is silver plated, so warm to fairly hot water is fine. Those with a lacquered horn should stick to warm water only. Using hot water, especially on older lacquer, will likely result in sheets of it going down the drain! Not the desired outcome.

[trickg]

To me it sounds like you may not clean your horn often enough. I've noticed that if I let too much time pass between cleanings, there really is a significant change to the blow, and it can actually detrimental immediately following the cleaning - it's amazing how much your lips/body shift to accommodate the horn, so that when there is a shift, it can take your chops a couple of days to catch up. It's not as bad as the shift you experience when changing horns, but it's still there.

But in any case, yes, I have noticed how a clean horn will play and respond much differently than a dirty one.

[Kehaulani]

I order Roto-Rooter once a year. Works for me.

[Dr GO]

@Kehaulani said in A great cleaning breakthrough:

I order Roto-Rooter once a year. Works for me.

I have considered having a gastroenterologist to whom I refer my patients perform quarterly endoscopic evaluations of my horns and to perform bovie electrocautery to eliminate any plaques if found within the lumin of the horn. Perhaps I can use my American Federation of Musicians instrument insurance program to reimburse these expenses through a novel ICD-10 coding scheme.