Posts made by Newell Post

@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.

@tornado1957 Think of it as a treadmill for the lips.

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

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-proctor Ya gotta love those zip ties.

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.

@trumpetlearner What program did you use to create that graphic? It's very good.

@shifty My problem with all of these methods is that I like to take all of the slides out several times per year for a thorough cleaning. Sure, you can re-do any of them. But the cleaning thing is also my problem with triggers. You have to unscrew the hardware for cleaning.

At 5:58.... 49 years ago I decided to become a professional architect instead of a professional cornetist. I'm not a famous architect. I never built the Empire State Building. Nobody outside of a few local areas ever heard of me. But it was the right decision for me.

Thanks for posting this, Dale. It is worth watching to the end, with or without the Carnival of Venice.

@dr-go Maybe it was March Fourth (or forth).

Why have I kept having dreams about marching band for the past month? I haven't played in a real marching band in 40 years. Sometimes it is the usual dream kinds of things where the sheet music in the lyre is for the wrong show or the horn has no mouthpiece. Other times everything is perfectly normal. Weird. I don't get it.

Yeah, teenagers in bars playing a song about a creep using "candy" and "pictures" to entice young girls into his limo. What could possibly go wrong with that? But my teenage party band played it too, LOL. Everybody loved the vibe and nobody listened to the lyrics. Great song to play for New Years Eve parties.