Posts made by flugelgirl

Terrible photo, but my early 50s Callicchio! I think this is enough to make you all jealous for now

Reynolds with sterling bell - haven’t researched this one yet, but it plays!

Buffet Crampon - no real info on this one, but it’s a lot like a heavier Selmer...

1962 Martin Committee flugel

1941 Bach Mercury

1942 Conn 112B

All right, I’ll play - here’s a couple of mine.....
1939 King Silver Tone Master model

@Dr-GO even though it’s a radio broadcast, it is in conjunction with a local school group. Whether their district will shut down or not we will see, as they are a bit outside the area that is currently shut down. I’m hoping that the radio session date of April 20th will stay on track but there’s always the possibility of delay.
My day job is covering the slack as well - people like to shop online when they are stuck at home, so our sales are increasing. I just may end up having to chem clean more horns that get returned!

There’s been a bunch of rehearsals and gigs cancelled in my area due to the COVID-19 freak out. I get hired pretty regularly as a sub for community band stuff to read down shows when they are missing a member or need some extra oomph in the section. This time of year I’m normally doing some work as an improv coach for student jazz groups as well, and most of my bookings for March have been cancelled due to schools and other venues closing to outside events until further notice. It’s pretty frustrating! My husband and I are booked to play on a friend’s college senior recital, and we’re hoping that it doesn’t get cancelled as well. Hopefully this will end soon, as I am scheduled as a mentor for local KNKX radio School of Jazz series, and am looking forward to it! We will see......

@Trumpetsplus great idea. If we have a player buy a rotary instrument in house I show them care in person, but since we are an online business we have few customer visits by appointment only. We’re working on a care sheet to send with purchases - lucky the woodwind tech has a degree in graphic design, so we should be able to set up some nice instructions.

@SSmith1226 I wouldn’t as I haven’t tried it, and it may freeze things up a bit more since you would be rinsing out all the oil.

@SSmith1226 I would never recommend that someone who is not trained to ultrasonically clean an instrument to do so at home, especially in a cleaner set up for other purposes. I would also never clean something like a gun in my setup just because the approach and chemicals used may be drastically different, and I have no training for guns.
As far as rotary maintenance goes, oil rotor spindle and bearing before playing, and play regularly as the condensation from your breath is part of what keeps rotors moving. You can pull and clean slides once in a while, but get your regular pro clean if you’re not familiar with disassembling and reassembling rotors and strings. They are a bit more complicated than pistons and require the right skill and tools.

Just be thankful that you can clean yourself pretty easily. Most trumpeters have been taught to disassemble and clean their instruments. Euphonium players seem not to know that the bottom valve caps are movable parts and never clean no matter how much they play. French hornists and other rotary players are incapable of disassembling their instruments and have no idea what a rotor looks like or how it actually functions. Tuba players want to clean but just don’t have the space, and tuba chem cleans are expensive enough that they go too long between cleanings unless they have the budget for it. Trombonists fall into two categories: those that clean constantly and are super picky about every detail of maintenance and repair, and the caveman who never cleans anything.
As for my own horns, the daily players get cleaned about once a month with a soap and water bath. I have my own dip tank in my home shop, but sometimes will pop one of mine in the work Ultrasonic tank when I’m done for the day, depending on how much time/energy I have. Regular home cleaning saves you money in the end, because most shops will charge you a flat rate for a clean, and added hourly rate for any work they have to do on top of that, which includes pulling slides, removing corroded stems, etc. If it takes me 2hrs to get your horn apart, you’ll be paying me a whole lot more to clean it! The fix for this is regular maintenance, not trying to do it yourself if you don’t have the skill or training.

@Dr-GO Super Recordings are one of a handful of horns that won’t play up to A440 for me, normally about 5-10 cents flat with the tuning slide all the way in. Once in a while I’ll find one that’s closer to pitch, but I just don’t like the way they play for the most part, so I’m not too upset about that. I own a Recording that I need to get rid of - I only bought it to flip, anyway. Someone will like it, but it’s not fun for me. It has nothing to do with my mouthpiece, and I’m not one to collect a bunch of vintage mouthpieces to play with vintage horns. My ACB MV3C* works with nearly everything new or vintage anyway, and what my modern mouthpieces don’t work on I’m not usually interested in playing. I keep a couple of Bach and Olds mouthpieces in my test kit I keep at my bench, but I don’t remember the last time I needed to use them to test with.

Was it an A4 or an A4LT that you played? ML or L? The two models are remarkably different in their response, and bore size plays a pretty big part in that as well.
As far as the Fulcrum goes, it plays a lot like the Super Recording. If you want a Super Recording, but don’t want to pay a lot for what could end up a project horn, the Fulcrum is the way to go. It’s actually so similar that I have the same intonation issue with both models, so neither is a good fit for me, but it should work for anyone who likes a Super Recording.

Price is too high, especially for any potential issues it may have. Most of the older Bach Cs I have played have not been as good as the newer ones.

My situation as a tech is different than most as the majority of the stuff I work on belongs to the shop and has not been sold yet. However, we do occasionally do some return and repair for customer care issues. In these cases I always speak up if there is a chance I won’t be able to make it look as nice as it did before. I will also send the more complicated things that might be outside my current ability to the head tech. If this shop has more than one tech you may need to discuss with management. If he’s a shop owner, dispute it but find someone better. As far as what you can get with the dispute, it will probably depend on your state’s laws, and what your tech is willing to admit to. If you don’t have dated photos of what it looked like before, you might not get much. My personal gear is insured under its own policy, which includes repair costs. You may want to look at this option in the future.

I played them at NAMM around 2012-2013, but don’t remember much about them other than I walked away and didn’t go back. I do find it interesting that the best review they could find to put on the website was from someone who doesn’t want to play them, but that has nothing to do with this thread. If any of them are going to Wayne Tanabe for repairs I’m pretty sure they’re not coming back damaged, though.

Valve stems are never a thing a horn would be sent out for. The only time tools are ever needed to install them is if the old ones are corroded. In that case, your local tech should be able to order the part and install for you. Stems are a part that is usually an easy order from the factory, though some manufacturers will only allow dealers to order parts. This whole situation just sounds very weird to me - though I have never dealt with Phaeton, I regularly order stems from other companies, and ordered after-market stems for horns as a player before I became a tech.

I used to think French horn was a more difficult instrument than trombone. I was VERY wrong! I have an easy time getting around a horn accurately and in tune, and with a decent sound, though my husband still tells me I overblow a bit. Trombone, well... I sound like a 10yr old with really good chops. It’s awful - every instrument sits a bit differently with it’s slide positions, and I have a much easier time getting a good sound out of a euph than a trombone as well. I have a lot more respect for good trombonists now, and a lot more sympathy for the bad ones! I tend to have my boss play test trombones whenever possible since he is a trombonist. Occasionally I have to apologize to everyone I work with and test them myself. Yesterday had to play test a Superbone I finished, but that was kind of fun