Posts made by Newell Post

@tjveloce said in In search of “my horn.”:

I’m basically looking for a horn which in a blind sound test might make the listener think “is he playing a trumpet or a flugelhorn?”

OK. So try this..... Put a flugel mouthpiece on a cornet. My Yamaha flugel mouthpieces fit on my Schilke cornet just fine, and that combination produces a vaguely "flumpet-ish" tone. It plays in tune and is easier to control than the flugelhorn. I don't do it very often, but it works in some situations. The flugel mouthpieces are much deeper than cornet mouthpieces and they make a big difference to the sound.

@dr-go Yes, but it would have been better if they were plastic donkeys. You know......... like.......... wait for it...... asses.

Please note that "Spam" is a trademarked brand name and the fine folks at Hormel have only requested that the internet scourge be denominated as "spam".

Sorry. I used to love cars. Now I hate cars. They are a necessary evil, but I just want ones that start and run reliably and drive comfortably.

@masterwannabe Print out (or link to) this thread, send it to the parent, and ask him/her to send it to the teacher. Everyone here is an experienced trumpet player. Some are professional, semi-pro, or music teachers. I think it is fair to say the consensus of this group is that a like-new 1971 Ambassador is far better for a middle school student than a worn out Bach Mercedes II or equivalent Yamaha. Furthermore, a like-new 1971 Ambassador can be acquired for a very small fraction of the cost of a new Bach TR300 or Yamaha YTR-2330 and, if taken care of, can probably be re-sold at break-even later on.

I liked it, too. I saw it the night it opened. They gave out souvenirs on opening night: old-timey fans like they used to use in theaters and churches before air conditioning. I still have mine lying around....

@bigdub The real Florence Foster Jenkins was so bad that they had to make the movie version a little less bad than real life to make the movie tolerable.

I'll try it one time. It will be interesting to see how many other cornetists show up with this restriction in place...

Yeah, one of my other bands practices outdoors in a church parking lot. Nobody has died, yet.

Well, so one of my bands starts up again on Monday evening after a year-and-a-half hiatus. Since we meet in the band room of a local high school, THIS is required (in addition to bell covers). Not sure if I can tolerate this or not......

Why not a Recording?

I remember Doc saying in an interview somewhere that he was able to hire all of the top studio musicians for the Tonight Show Band, because it was a great job. It was steady work every weekday with every weekend off, so they could play freelance gigs on the weekend. And there were no exhausting road trips full of one-nighters. That doesn't take away from their terrific musicianship, but it does help explain how he got the top players.

@j-jericho The text says Eb.

@administrator If the valves are good, the dents are fixable. That's a good buy.

https://www.classicfm.com/artists/alison-balsom/covid-19-study-brass-woodwind-droplets/

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.

Just in case you missed the movie version, here is an actual recording.

If you are already a musician, get a copy of the old Mitchell on Trumpet series. Start with Book 1. It's kind of boring, but it systematically progresses through everything you need to know and develop as a cornetist.

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.

1. Fill the slide/leadpipe with ice water.
2. Let it sit for about 10 minutes.
3. Pour out the ice water and heat the outer part of the slide with a hair dryer. (You want the inner part to shrink and the outer part to expand.)
4. Just keep wiggling and flexing the slide until it moves.

BTW, Monster Oil makes a really good slide lube that seems to stay flexible in storage for a long time. I have horns that stay in storage for a year or two, and the slides always move freely after storage when I use the Monster Oil slide lube.