Best posts made by barliman2001

@tjveloce NOW we know why some manufacturers of TSOs put white gloves in the cases...!

@BigDub In the same spirit:

How do you get a giraffe into a freezer?

Open door, giraffe goes in, close door.

Welcome to TB! I admire your indomitable spirit, and your unquenchable thirst for music. Feel free to ask any question you might want answered, even if the question sounds stupid to your ears - there is a saying in Vienna, "You can only get cleverer by asking stupid questions."
As to holding the instrument: ErgoBrass have a very nice contraption that might suit your needs.

Well, this is the perfect place to tell my particular relationship with the trumpet. I always loved the instrument - from three years onwards. I once, at age five, even got a toy trumpet, even made of brass!, with ten "valves", each of which was confined to one note. They don't make them any more... at any rate, I loved that thing, but it did not feel right. It had too many of these round things sticking up above the leadpipe. Proper trumpets had only three, I knew for certain. So one day I sneaked away into the basement with my grandpa's small metal saw, and started working... neatly sawed off seven of the ten "valves". So now it not only looked like a proper trumpet, you could actually grip it like a proper trumpet. I was intensely proud of this achievement and showed it to my parents who were unaccountably angry. They were talking about, "you're always ruining things" and when I said that I wanted to learn trumpet, they told me I would only break it like the toy trumpet... so I was thrown onto piano and violin (both were already in the house).
And I hated it. They soon realized I was hopeless with the violin, but kept my nose to the grindstone on piano. The local music school would not do, so every second day, they carted me to a neighbouring town for lessons with a very special, very old-school teacher: A spinster of about 69, complete with moustache, and a wooden ruler lying on the piano to whack a student's fingers with. For seven years they forced me into this kind of thing, and I became quite good at piano - out of sheer self-defence! - won a few local competitions... until I boldly told them that they could throw me out or beat me to death, but I would not go to that teacher again... They tried a different teacher for another year or two, but by this time I was refusing to practice so piano lessons ended, after nine years or so. And quite a few years later, at age 22, I won a trumpet in a raffle. Well, a bugle. No valves or anything, just a tube with a bell flare and something that could imaginatively be called a mouthpiece.
OK, I thought, this looks like fate. How do I get this thing to work? So I got out a Maurice André record cover - 1970 vinyl, in fact this album https://www.cdandlp.com/maurice-andre/l-extraordinaire-maurice-andre/33t/r118969818/ - retreated in front of the big bathroom mirror and looked closely at how Maurice's lips were shaped on the mouthpiece. Tried to emulate the shape, put some tension on and - - - toot! Since then, I styled myself "student of Maurice André". It became true about ten years later...
Next day, I went into the local music shop and bought myself a trumpet kit - Chinese "Comet", complete with 7C mouthpiece, cleaning set, wooden case and set of white gloves, for 99 Deutschmarks. Continued to work with "Maurice". After two days, asked my choir director to find me a trumpet teacher. Which he did. And only a week later, accompanied me to a specialist shop where I bought my first "proper" trumpet, a Bach Strad 229 C/Bb... new, for a whopping 2,999 Deutschmarks (we're talking 1988!). No stopping now...

My most exquisite trumpet memory is a recital by Maurice André in Munich - or, rather, not the recital but what happened afterwards.
I attended the recital and afterwards, went to the stage door to perhaps get Maurice to autograph my special "signatures case". When I got in, I found Maurice heartbroken and almost in tears. He had broken off the screw to the tuning device on the leadpipe of his picc. It was Saturday night, he had not thought of bringing a second instrument, and was due to play a matinee concert next morning.
Well, I got him to calm down a bit and told him I could help him get that fixed within the next few hours, if he would leave everything to me and just hop into a taxi with me. From the taxi, I called up my good, now departed friend Hermann Ganter who lived over his workshop as an instrument maker and repairer. I just told Hermann that I was coming within the next half hour and that he should be awake and sober.
When our taxi arrived at the very outskirts of Munich, Hermann was on his doorstep with his working apron over his nightshirt and, without really looking, growled that I was in for some rough treatment if... "Oh, Monsieur André, I am enchanted..." The repair was a very minor affair, but Maurice was happy, and invited me to stay a week or two at his place in the South of France. Which I did. We became firm friends, and a few weeks after Maurice's passing, I got a parcel with a lawyer's letter saying that the contents of the parcel were intended by Maurice as a last parting gift to his saviour after the Munich recital.
The contents? A 1966 Selmer high-G picc that Maurice had played during the first years of his career. He still remembered that I did not really like a Bb or A picc, and willed that high-G to me...

Definitely of Russian origin. The water key is normal size, so that is an indicator of how tiny it is. Rotary cornet for the discant voice of Russian military music (which still, to this day, distinguishes between cornet and trumpet parts, the cornet parts being the top parts sometimes reaching far above the staff).
Harbin, by the way, was at one time the administrative centre for the Chinese Eastern Railway, a Russian-built and -owned extension of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Harbin in fact was a Russian city transplanted into what is now China, had a large Russian naval base complete with naval orchestra and several ship's bands as well as a navy-owned musical instruments factory that stamped their instruments with the name of the town and a serial number. Very few of these instruments survive nowadays.
After the 1917 revolution, Harbin was cut off from the evolving Soviet Union and became a long-lasting Russian Imperial enclave, only fading away in the late 1930s.
Congratulations for having such an instrument in at least optically good condition!

How do you get a rhino into a freezer?

Open door, yes-

NO.

Giraffe out, rhino in, close door.

Not quite blasphemous, but definitely out of the ordinary...

@rowuk We're deeply involved in the rescue operations as well - well, apart from myself because I managed to catch pneumonia and am incapacited in hospital... just strong enough to slowly walk from my room to the café, only to find that it is closed on Saturdays...
But until I was brought here, we organised three truck-loads of aid for Lviv, and tomorrow my wife and her son are driving to the Polish-Ukrainian border to pick up several musician friends from Lviv with their families and deliver about 500 kilos of medical supplies. Our first "convoy" brought 500 kilos of army rations and collected nine orphaned children for foster families in Austria. And next week we are clearing out of our Vienna home to live just in Germany for six months to make space for two Ukrainian families. Have to find storage for 49 trumpets first... yes, I know, I can always send them to you in unmarked cases!

@Dr-GO Get into contact with allegro optical in Meltham, UK. They specialize in musicians' glasses and are able to provide you with variable varifocals to your needs. All employees there are musicians themselves and know exactly what to do. I just got my first set from them - fabulous. Previously, I had the problem that after a cataract operation, my eye accommodation was gone. So I had to use reading glasses for the music, but then the conductor was way out of focus and sometimes, even hard to see. Now, that problem is gone (no, I haven't switched to viola). I can read the music clearly and comfortably, and the conductor stays in focus as well.

@BigDub I met that guy when he came home from the African safari - we met at an airport whie we were waiting for our connections. He told me that apart from seeing that elephant,he had a close encounter with a lion that entered his tent. He took off at speed, not wanting to be a lion's breakfast. And so they ran - the guy in front, the lion behind. Until the guy could not run any more. He just stood there and faced the lion, "and suddenly, the lion slipped and fell down". - "And you just stood there? Wow! I would have sh*it my pants." - "Well, what do you think the lion slipped on?"

Playing a New Year's Eve Ball with Big Band Markus Fluhr www.bbmf.de, and then several weeks of assisting my wife with "Countess Mariza", done by the touring operetta company she has just wormed herself into to such an extent that the present owner wants to retire and hand over the company to her... then a concert with the Vienna Lakeside Music Academy Symphony Orchestra - music from animation movies - and then a few Carnival gigs.

In 1991, I acquired my Courtois 154 R flugel by rather devious means... a large brass xhop in Munich had invited a number of makers for an in-house trade fair of brass instruments. All the obvious people were there, and a few weirdos. Courtois had come with two truckloads of instruments and were hoping to return with only one truck, so they had hired only one for the return trip. Things did not go quite as planned, and when they were packing up after four days, they could not quite get the unsold instruments into the one truck, and as there was a big trade fair going on in Munich at the time, there were no hire trucks to be had for love or money. Imagine a young guy loitering about their truck while they were discussing what to do... a young guy who had loitered about their stand on every day of the fair, ahd tested the instruments and had stressed that did not have any money for a new instrument at all... Imagine that guy asking whether he could help. And they said, "Oui" rather shortly and pressed an instrument case in my hands - the one case that they could not by any means fit into the truck any more. Content? One 154 R flugelhorn. I've never found one better suited to me, so after a few years of comparing, I just quit and am totally happy with that flugel...

A year or two back, I discovered an almost-like-new LA Olds Recording in Votruba's in Vienna. Had been there for quite some time... they were only too happy to take my UMI Benge 7 for it (decent horn, but I somehow never got to grips with it), because the Benge was normal style and the Recording's Balanced style just did not catch on in Vienna... now, it's my main big band axe. Serial # 1018xx, dating it to approximately to 1954... so far, I always played it with a Bach Megatone 1C, but yesterday, I ordered a Swiss Brand Turbo 1 1/2 C in blue transparent plastic. got it today, delivered directly into my room in the rehab clinic - Thomann are great! - and it went from wonderful to spectacular... the new mouthpiece somehow released another half octave in range... and it does sound great, even though it is rather lightweight. And it's so warm on the lips - I am due to play with a local brass group on New Year's Eve, outside, and that mouthpiece was ordered for that purpose - in the hope that Thomann would only deliver it in the New Year, giving me an excuse to back out... great service!
Would love to post a few pics, but my phone is not on speaking terms with my laptop just now...

@Shifty You forgot a few things:

• the 33 guitar players who argue how Jimi Hendrix would have done it
• the 17 blues singers who make sad songs about the fate of the old bulb
• the conductor who holds the bulb and waits for the world to revolve around him
• the trumpet player who holds the bulb while seven other trumpet players drink until the room is spinning
• the viola player who holds the bulb fitting instead of the bulb

To put an end to all you people getting blue in the face holding your breath for news of the ACB Doubler picc...
It Has Arrived.
Sturdy box big enough for a euphonium. Lots of bubblewrap, then a nice lightweight case with a big outside pocket and rings for either a shoulder strap or backpack straps. Two straps provided.
Sturdy zipper.
And then...
more bubblewrap
A nice fabric leadpipe pouch with a spare A leadpipe
A nondescript 7C mouthpiece (not a bad one, as they go)...
and one gorgeous ACB Doubler piston picc in yellow brass with satin lacquer.
Nice finish, nice to touch. Comfortable to hold. And then...
Surprisingly easy to play (a Selmer is much harder, and even the Stomvi Elite is not as free-blowing). Intonation is superb - not much facial acrobatics needed to keep in tune in all ranges. And the tone is quite pleasant as well. Needs a bit of getting used to, but that's with every picc.
At that price (Trent was so kind as to ask the show demo price, and included the second leadpipe) I am very, very happy!
Oh yes, what did I pay?
$ 685, and had to pay another 100 bucks import duties (collected by the postman).
Still very happy. First official outing is a concert with the Vienna Lakeside Music Academy for their concert "Over and Under" featuring music from animated movies, 25 January. So now I'll have to do a bit of practising!
Trent, thanks!!

Our dear friend Gordon once sent me a gift package with several cornets in it: A Buescher Aristocrat that to this day is my main axe in jazz, an Elkhart by Buescher that's middle of the road but unusual for its pig's tail wrap, and a King Tempo that was absolutely airtight. I tried everything - washing through, snake, spitballs... nothing worked. Finally, in desperation, I gave it to Votruba's. And they put their endoscope inside and as a result unsoldered the bell. What did they find? An ancient wad of chewing gum that someone had rammed down the bell.

@SSmith1226 Oh, you've got that wonderful combination tool... right, oboe reed tuner, clarinet pad shaver and (biggest) the banjo tuner, and left, the two musician's nutrition helpers...