Best posts made by Newell Post

@Dr-GO Actually, not quite.... A BROKEN watch is right twice per day. But, for example, a watch that is set 30 minutes ahead of the correct time, but runs true, is never correct.

One major difference is that professional instruments can be purchased with many different features to suit the experienced player. Bach Stradivarius, for example, can be purchased with at least 4 different bell geometries, at least 4 different bell materials, several different finishes, and a bunch of different "accessories", although some of those things require a special order. Student and intermediate instruments usually come in one configuration, take it or leave it. As as example, I have an older Bach Mercedes which I use as a practice and backup horn. That model was sold as an "intermediate" model with Strad valves, but it had only one available bell geometry and two finishes.

The only truly awful "student" instrument I have ever owned is a Tromba plastic cornet I bought just for fun. It's no fun.

Dale has the right info. The answer is: alto horn based on 2.75" LOA and 0.432" shank diameter at the receiver. Now, how in the world an alto horn mouthpiece got duct taped onto a trumpet is lost to history.

@grune Try a luggage and shoe repair shop. They exist in most cities. A local shop like that repaired one of my older Bach cases.

ROWUK in the house....

@Dr-GO Dude. Sorry, but that comment is not OK, even if it was lighthearted. There have been times in my life when I made that kind of money and paid those kinds of taxes. (And I'm not an MD.) But there are people on this board who struggle to come up with $100 for a new mouthpiece. I don't make your kind of money today, and I'm lucky enough that I don't need to. But this is a site about trumpet playing. I know the OP was about one of Louis Armstrong's collectible horns, but have a little compassion for the players just trying to get by on gigging.

@kehaulani Just joking around, dude.

Everclear is 75.5% FWIW. I was using it as hand sanitizer when the stores were all sold out.

OK, so to bring a musical twist to this thread....

As one of the commenters said on YouTube.... "I hope nobody else anywhere in the world needed a contrabass trombone that day...

I've never had much luck with penetrating oils for this. The fit between the tubes is too tight and the corrosion can be too far away from the point where the penetrating oil is applied.

I had one that was really stuck one time where I filled the slide with crushed dry ice. (I had some in the shop for a different kind of thing related to my day job.) I let it sit for a while and then hit the outside of the tube with a heat gun, of the type used for a number of things in construction. (Sort of like a very high temperature hair dryer.) That, combined with wiggling, tapping, and flexing, finally got it loose.

You need to be very careful with both the dry ice and the heat gun, since one is extremely cold and the other extremely hot.

How about sticking to an established standard like....

C4 (middle C)
C5 (treble C)
C6 (high C)
C7 (double C)
C8... that's baloney. No trumpet ever really gets to C8.

Yeah, yeah. I know Bb trumpets are transposing instruments one step off concert key. But the forgoing notation is traditional, accepted, and concise.

I have one friend who loves to tinker with mouthpieces but, of course, he doesn't have a machine lathe or the right tools to do a professional job. He always buys a certain type of older mouthpiece whenever he can find one. (Always the same basic model.) Then he chucks them up in a big drill, clamps it down to the workbench, and then goes after it with drill bits to open up the throat a little and various grades of emery cloth to change the rim or whatever.

I do not recommend this. Among other things, he winds up taking off most of the silver plating leaving a raw brass mouthpiece. He will get one that he thinks is perfect for a while, but after a few weeks he's on to a new experiment. If he ever did find the perfect configuration, he could never replicate it.

Just buy used mouthpieces online and try different ones. It's fairly cheap that way and if you ever find the perfect one, you can buy more.

@BigDub spackling

@administrator said in Which trumpet to buy?:

-- Used Bach 190 (lightly used) (probably) You can try before you buy and probably save some money over the new price.

@Brian-Moon Dude, I'm 64 years old and a recreational player. It ain't going to happen.

@jessie Can you post a very short video to help us understand the problem better? It sounds weird, but we will try to help.

@Vulgano-Brother That's how he got the (real) scar across his face. He got kicked or kneed in the face while performing at CBGB.

Many years ago, I got to meet Bill Chase before one of their concerts, along with a group of other people. As part of the Q&A somebody asked him what horns they used. As I recall, the answer was: 1 Schilke (for Bill), 1 Connstellation, 1 Benge, and one I don't remember. Maybe a Committee or a Selmer something or other. In any event, that trumpet-centric group had 4 top-notch players that all used different horns. There isn't one right answer.

@BigDub From what I have read about PP, the ability to identify a pitch is completely unrelated to the ability to produce a particular note upon demand. Yes, a person with PP needs to be taught that "A" = 440 Hz (or whatever convention is used in the culture in question). But once they learn that convention, they can apparently always identify it.

1. Chemical cleaning. Soak the pistons for a limited time in a mild acid solution. Details are discussed elsewhere in TM.
2. Mild hand lapping with very fine abrasive lapping compound. Also discussed elsewhere in TM. Lapping can also improve the sticky slides.

Do not try these things at home on any instrument of any real value, unless you have training in how they are best done. If it is a mostly worthless "project horn" for experimenting and fooling around, have at it.