Posts made by Newell Post

@grune Thanks, grune. It's a Bach Mercedes, which uses the Strad valve block, so the pistons are monel. If the oil doesn't continue to address the problem, I'll take it to the tech to check the tolerances, assuming the shop ever re-opens.

@administrator The Monette costs about $10K. The artsy-fartsy decoration accounts for the rest.

@grune Yes, we are living in a golden age. I love the vintage horns, but the modern ones are more consistent and more reliable. You also have many more choices today in terms of materials, geometry, and many other variables. And trumpets are cheap compared to many other instruments. When you can buy a slightly used top of the line, professional trumpet for about $1,500, that's a golden age. If you really want to spend $10K on a trumpet, you can. But you don't need to.

So, here's a recent valve oil story. And the answer is........ Monster Oil "Smoother (Our Thickest)."

A while ago I bought a Bach Mercedes from a guy, just for a backup horn and because it was cheap. The serial number dates it to about 1980. It has a few dings, but no major dents. The silver plate is 99% and the valves have excellent compression.

The first thing I did when I got it was (of course) a thorough cleaning. After that cleaning, it had two small problems: the first and third slides were very sticky and the first and second valves would hang up slightly on the upstroke. I polished the slides with Flitz and I also polished the pistons and casings VERY slightly first with Flitz and then with toothpaste.

After a second VERY thorough cleaning, the slides were perfect, but the valves still balked once in the while. (They felt perfect when first picking up the horn. But after playing for a while, as the horn warmed up, the valves would still balk on the upstroke once in a while.) Hetman #1 and #2 didn't seem to make any difference.

Next, I replaced the valve guides, valve springs, felts, and even the valve stems with new Bach OEM parts and did a third very thorough cleaning. This time I tried all 3 Hetman oils and still had occasional valve upstroke problems. At this point, I thought: "OK. That exhausts my bag of tricks. It has to go to the tech. But, oh wait. The shop is closed due to COVID-19. It will need to wait for a while. No problem. I have other horns."

But, since I'm mostly stuck at home, I thought I would try some of the Monster Oil "Smoother" I have sitting around for vintage horns, just as an experiment. I wiped everything off and applied the oil. When inserting the pistons in the casings, I made sure to rotate the pistons in the casings 3 or 4 turns before locking them in, just to make sure the oil coated all 360 degrees. And what do you know? It worked. At least so far, after about a week of playing: no valve hang ups.

I don't really have a good explanation for this. If the valves were too tight, you would expect the thinner/light oils to work better. But the heavier Monster Oil seems to be the answer for this horn, for whatever reason.

Torpedo cases are very sturdy and well made, in my experience. They do a great job of protecting your horn. But they are not the best when it comes to storing all of the "incidental" stuff that goes along with trumpet playing... mutes, sheet music, pencils, clothes pins, water bottle, trumpet stand, mute holder, spare eyeglasses, tissues, etc. etc. I like Protec for well made, inexpensive cases that can also hold all of the detritus.

@Dr-GO Oh. 4 valves. That explains it.

Well, there's always....

1. Pearl Jam
2. Guns and Roses
3. Stone Temple Pilots
4. Queen
5. The Doors
6. Led Zeppelin
7. Radiohead
8. Smashing Pumpkins
9. Alice in Chains
10. Cat Stevens (or almost any band named after an animal)
11. Blind Melon
12. Rolling Stones
13. Sex Pistols
14. The Police
15. The Beatles (spelling....)

I got a bottle of BERP several years ago for a vintage horn with worn valves. I got the thickest formulation and it is REALLY think. (Thicker than Hetmans's #3 or Monster's thickest, IMO.) It works well, but the action is pretty slow. However, I also hear they reformulated shortly thereafter and the newer BERPs might be faster.

I have written a couple of things and have given a few talks about the Spanish flu of 1918+. COVID-19 is not influenza and I'm not a doctor. But there are some interesting historical lessons learned, since COVID-19 and influenza are both RNA viruses.

One of the mysteries of the Spanish flu is that it just sort of went away in August of 1918. In the UK it almost completely disappeared. In the US it didn't disappear, but it did die down. But both in Europe and US, it came back in a much more lethal form in September/October of 1918. Then, it died down a second time in December, before resurging in January, 1919. (The exact dates vary a little bit depending on location.) No real cause for these two "die outs" has ever been identified, but I have a theory. (And whatever you think of Trump, I think this is the basis for his statements that COVID-19 "will just go away." He gets that notion from the Spanish flu. It did eventually mutate and "go away" after infecting about half of the world's population and killing about 5% of them. Nobody really knows how many people died in many parts of the globe.)

My theory is....... air conditioning. In 1918 air conditioning existed, but almost no buildings had it. The first buildings to get air conditioning were printing plants and a few theaters. So, people didn't have a lot of large gatherings in the Summer. It was too hot indoors. If they did have Summer gatherings, those events were mostly outdoors. Also, many windows were left open all day long in many buildings to get fresh air. But after Summer ended, they went back indoors for school, church, plays, and musical performances, etc, hence the explosion of cases in September/October. The December die-down might relate to schools being in recess and other seasonal changes of that nature.

HOWEVER, today air-conditioning is nearly universal, at least in most parts of the US. In the Summer, work and events are mostly indoors in re-circulated air conditioned air, hence the current flare up in COVID-19 cases. Instead of a Summer die-down, we may see a die-down of COVID-19 in the Fall, when more things happen outdoors and more windows are open.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Monster Oil also makes a terrific slide "grease." A little goes a very long way and lasts forever.

Hetman or Monster Oil. Both are synthetic and both come in 3 different viscosities. Monster Oil is more expensive, but claims to contain a corrosion-resisting additive. I use it on some of my "antiques" that mostly sit in the closet. Start with Hetman #2 (medium viscosity) and experiment from there.

@Dale-Proctor Wright's is good. I have used it for years. In theory, I suppose it removes a few molecules. But I haven't seen any detrimental effects.

... but that simply has got to be the last high-rise window inspection of my career. I'm just too old to do that stuff any more. I haven't been so exhausted in decades.

...HOWEVER, I had to spend every day this last week hanging off the side of a tall building in another city inspecting defective glass. I only managed to get one practice session in the hotel room with the pocket trumpet and a practice mute. Most notes were only off by a quarter-tone or a little more, but it was something. That's my longest layoff in the last 5 years. I'll get back to Mitchell On Trumpet Book 4 tonight. I don't think I'll need to fall back to Book 3, but after a week off, you never really know.

Only 41 years. Funny how time flies when you're having fun.

I really try to either practice or play (or both) 6 days per week. But that has been slipping to 5 and sometimes 4 days. The range has survived, but I know the stamina hasn't.

Does anyone know if Bach sells slightly stiffer than normal valve springs? I can find standard and "light" replacement valve springs. But I would like springs that are just a little bit stiffer, faster, and less "mushy." I know I can try to stretch the standard ones slightly, but I would like springs that come from the factory just a little more "aggressive." Thanks.

I am always reminded of the time Doc Severinsen called the flugelhorn a trumpet with a thyroid condition.