Best posts made by Trumpetb

I dont want to try to tell anyone that their existing solution
to sticking valves is wrong, but I am unhappy with lapping.

I do not believe that lapping is ever necessary unless it is with new built or newly refurbished valves or valves that are too tight in the bore.

If an instrument has great valves that have worked fine without sticking for for 30 years or 50 years, what benefit does lapping bring.

Players love to lap valves the forum is full of advice to lap valves with lapping compound or toothpaste or vim or grinding paste or rouge.

The forum is also full of complaints that valves have lost compression in equal measure.

Removing metal by lapping from a valve that already fits the valve block perfectly, removes dirt and residues and valve metal that is needed to give good compression as well.

The valve has not grown thicker or fatter over time, it has grown fatter simply with dirt and residues that have accreted and stuck to the valve in use.

Techs remove dirt and residues chemically not by grinding the valve surface.

If I have a car with residues and detritus on the paint, I dont rub the paint down with glasspaper or grinding paste to remove the dirt. That removes the paint as well.

I soften the dirt and clean the paint.

If I have sticking valves I remove the dirt and residues that make them stick,

If a valve has been working fine for many years and suddenly starts to stick I clean it I dont shave the metal thinner.

That leads to loss of compression.

I have only one instrument with bad compression, and that has signs of past amateur lapping of the valves possibly to remove the dirt that made the valves stick.

I think the practice of lapping valves should be abandoned unless there is a very good reason to do it.

Welcome

You are facing some obstacles

My thoughts are with paralysis of your entire left arm then you need a substitute for holding the instrument.

A possibility is some kind of jury rig strapped to you like movie camera rigs as in this on ebay

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115883673313?var=0&mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=710-53481-19255-0&campid=5338943143&toolid=20006&customid=CjwKCAjw29ymBhAKEiwAHJbJ8rTv8uyecNC09tMrcbTNGdtNeCG7bhww_t7eomRTNWtNXKBePYX1lBoCv-sQAvD_BwE&gclid=CjwKCAjw29ymBhAKEiwAHJbJ8rTv8uyecNC09tMrcbTNGdtNeCG7bhww_t7eomRTNWtNXKBePYX1lBoCv-sQAvD_BwE

I think you will need to work on playing with very low mouthpiece pressure.

I usually advise new players to practice making pitches as beautiful as humanly possible, to practice striking pitches confidently and strongly on pitch and practicing smooth unwavering tones.

If you can master these or at least work on them then you have a good chance of sounding at least as good as others in your community band and possibly better than many.

Range of course is always a challenge

My advice here is to practice musical phrases that include pitches at the upper end of your range and at the lower. This should see your range develop and gradually extend.

If you can play confidently and sound good at articulating and sounding pitches then you will win a place in the band and the respect of the other musicians.

Uan Rasey has been mentioned and he overcame disability to reach the very top.

It might seem like an impossible task at first to overcome your disability and reach a high standard but remember this, everything is impossible until you know how to do it.

I love your can do attitude.

I would be very disappointed if this site folded.

There is no other site as good as this.

I find the Trumpet Herald site to be flawed and unwelcoming.

I believe that new members are simply waiting for an opportunity to post, I hope they settle in and become more active.

The Mouthpiece is also relatively inactive. I guess Brass playing is far less popular now compared to Guitar woodwind and strings.

Having said that I see a lot of beginners at trumpet so the future while not bright is at least hopeful.

@administrator

Do not regret this purchase at all.

It is a magnificent instrument and beyond anything I have or could aspire to.

It will I am sure move you to a place in your playing and development where you and your audiences have huge satisfaction and enjoyment.

We all look back on our decisions and are tempted to question them but I firmly believe that we make the best decisions we can when we make them, this is therefore the best decision you could have made.

This is a great instrument and it can help you achieve greatness.

@Kehaulani and @a-j-trumpet

I have come to realise that you are both correct.

The boat has indeed sailed as you say Kehaulani.

And Bix was a champion without the benefit of modern tools like internet youtube netflix. He broke new ground in his day totally unaided as did Louis.

Thank you for your comments and for illuminating my understanding.

Kinda yes/no probably no.

The LA valves were quite different to the Fullerton valves there was a radical change to the guides that forced changes to the valves.

Most of the Ambassadors available are Fullertons and therefore unsuitable for an LA Special

Even during the LA period they changed the guides which changed the valves.

The result is you would have to buy an LA Ambassador to have any hope of valve compatibility between an Ambassador and an LA Special and both would have to have the exact same late LA valve design.

There are also differences between the early LA valve stem and late LA valve stem that would require the valve and the stem and maybe other parts to stay with the valve they came with and they may make the valves incompatible as well.

For example the early valve stem not only is a different length to the later valve stem but also has a different fixing to the valve so you have to use the same stem that comes with the valve and the chance of vertically aligning the valve is therefore slim.

This site shows the issues

https://www.robbstewart.com/olds-early-trumpets

The LA Ambassador uses the square shaped bar as a valve guide, if your Special has the same square shaped bar then it might be physically compatible with an LA Ambassador.

LA Ambassadors are quite rare and carry a premium cost.

Even if they are physically compatible the port positions are likely to be wrong anyway.

To put this in perspective an LA Ambassador may be a bit cheaper than a LA Special but will come with a heap of uncertainty and possibly extra costs on top so I would not even consider replacing an LA Special valve with an LA Ambassadors valve and have the extra risk.

You are probably better buying another LA Special and you will then know the valve will fit and you can use whichever instrument plays best. Additionally if the one you choose develops a problem you can simply swap the third valve over and have a second instrument. It would be as close as possible to a zero cost fix.

It just wont be cost effective to try to get an Ambassador valve to work in my opinion.

And you wont know the condition of the Ambassadors valve before you see it and that may come with issues as well.

You have not said why you need a replacement valve perhaps it might be fixable by a tech at far less cost than trying to source a suitable Ambassadors valve if that were even possible.

This is an open message to the administrator.

Kehaulani is one of the most respected members of this site and it would be a great loss if he never returned.

I have seen some big problems with other sites preventing their members logging in for no apparent or logical reason, that magically fixed themselves after some weeks of frustration by the member affected and the admin of the site.

I believe kehaulanis issues are of this kind, where he does everything correctly many times over but to no avail, and the admin is defeated time after time when trying to resolve the issue for him.

Can I ask the admin to revisit this issue and work with kehaulani on it in the hopes of defeating this software account issue whatever it is.

And could any member who has contact with kehaulani ask him to try again to gain access.

The members miss him, I miss him, and I want to see this issue resolved if at all possible.

We all suffer issues in our lives from time to time and I know kehalani has suffered more than his share of them, but an inability to log in to a site that he wants to log in to and that wants him to log in to it but the software stonewalls him, should not be one of them.

Can it be looked at again.

Thanks in advance

It is easy to speculate especially about quality when there is no real evidence available one way or the other.

The thing about trumpets is, not all instruments were engraved or stamped with makers marks or details. The better ones usually were but even that means little.

Some instruments that appear to be great when looking at them can turn out to be poor.

It can be a crapshoot.

Even good engravings could turn out to be false and intended simply to mislead purchasers.

You have to know a huge amount about instruments to be confident that you have a good one just by looking at it unless you know its history.

Only one test matters. How does it play.

Have a good player test it and give an opinion or take it to a good tech for an opinion on it.

It just looks like a trumpet and that is all I can say about it from those few images. I dont think anyone can say any more than this.

See what a good player makes of it before having an opinion on it..

This is odd that the question is even asked.

Music from the earliest time was heavily improvised it had to be, there was no means or method to write anything down.

Before the time of formal notation which appeared as Neumes in or around the 9th century there was only recalled melodies and learned plainchant and gregorian chant, passed on by word of mouth.

This followed on from Pope Gregory the 1st and his standardisation of chant in the 7th century.

Musicians were expected to improvise and use their experience to do so in groups all improvising simultaneously.

Rules were invented to make it more structured but it often created dissonances and errors which had to be corrected on the fly.

Musician would treat music as a suggestion and use embellishments freely.

Much later when formal scores appeared in or around the 15th century composed music written in a score was treated as a suggested framework upon which to improvise and diminutions and other embellishments were expected to be performed by the musician.

Musica Ficta was expected to be applied by musicians in addition.

Musica Ficta is the changing of the written notes adding sharps or flats, or the addition of many extra notes or the shifting of the melody up or down an octave, according to the skill and talent or desire of the musician and changing the score as it was played to solve issues of discordant note pairs that often appeared.

Later composers complained that the number of added notes in musicians diminutions were so many that the music became chaotic and they began to demand that the music be played as written.

Maestro composers even suggested that while improvising in ensembles, different instrumentalists should play solos individually and each take a turn.

This sounds very much like a modern Jazz ensemble with free interpretation, octave shifts runs and trills and free improvisation upon a theme or melody.

All this was well before Bachs day.

I regard Jazz now merely as a modern version of 15th century musicianship that had many techniques that had become lost over time and have now been rediscovered in the new age.

I recommend the site "Early Music Sources" to understand just how highly developed and technically brilliant the early musicians were.

Dont get me wrong we are very advanced now and Jazz is wonderful, but we must recognise just how wonderful early musicians were and what we owe to them.

Apologies for adding yet another post on this topic but if there is one thing I have learned it is that there are more than a dozen ways for valves to show this behavior, and it can take a huge effort to resolve it.

This is perhaps why there are so many different opinions on this.

First of all the manufacturing process is not consistent it never can be but I would expect the manufacturer to have made good valves lapped well to the casings.

The manufacturer is the first stop and they will confirm that either the valves are within tolerances or they need to be worked on, and this would be a warranty fix,

If the manufacturer says the valves are good they should offer suggestions of what to do next.

The next consideration is valves that need to bed in and that will take a few weeks to complete, If you play it rarely then it could take months. It is the number of valve actuations that beds valves in not the time in days or weeks

Next after this is cleanliness and care, if you allow dirt debris lint or other material to get into the instrument then this could cause sticking of the valves. Keep the instrument scrupulously clean.

The casings are not made of the same material as the valves and differential expansion as the instrument warms up can cause the clearance between valve and chamber to close up and the first you know of it is the valves stick if the gap is small around the valve.

Next there is breakfast lunch and dinner. If you do not clean your teeth before playing then you will be blowing your last meal into the instrument and the days pizza or fries will get stuck on the valves and stop them working.

Next we have finger action. Eccentric finger action can cause valves to stick and this happens more frequently as the instrument warms

The final conclusion may be as complex as this:-

The valves are new and tolerances are super tight, the tolerances close up as the instrument warms, debris in the mouth is blown into the instrument, and the fingers dont make a pure straight up and down stroke.

Add to this if the oiling in not as frequent as it could be, then all of these effects add up and the valves stick.

You say that the valves stick then after cleaning and oiling the problem goes away and then returns after some time. You dont say how long that some time is.

This suggests that
1 the oil is settling as you play
2 the valves have some debris on them just before you clean them
3 fresh possibly excessive oil is causing the valve to slide easily and the problem goes away

I always over oil so I recommend that.

I oil before play, then oil during play, then oil after play.
There is no such thing as too much oil there can be however too little oil.

My experience cannot be used as a guide however because my valves all have loose tolerances so your instrument demands a much higher level of care than mine do.

I would not expect a quick fix on this, but I will say it sounds like you have a good instrument, and after this issue is resolved it will be a great instrument.

Dont lose faith in your instrument, it is I believe no more than teething troubles and it will improve.

Take it one step at a time starting with the manufacturer.

Thats excellent news,
thank you administrator.

No high temps here

This was a difference of opinion between two members who respect each other, and both stand by their opinions

@administrator I totally agree.

It is interesting to note that this was as true as much in the baroque and renaissance times as it is now.

The improvs quite often became chaotic and discordant to the displeasure of musicologists of the time.

I guess things eventually come full circle so easily.

Some Jazz improvs are spectacularly beautiful as are many orchestral works. But then some leave me cold in both genres.

When I am reaching for something new I often crash and burn, it comes I think with the territory.

These adjustable rings came into favour on instruments that students would use.

They were generally missing on professional standard horns.

The reason for their existence was that as the student grows into adulthood the smaller child sized hands grow in size and the fingers reach further. A fixed ring can then be awkward for the student.

Students need the ring position to be conveniently adjustable and the adjustable ring allows this.

The adjustment to the ring position can be made easily so that the ring is always a comfortable distance from the valve block for the player no matter how large their hands and how long their fingers.

When they finish growing a fixed ring becomes convenient.

The Lyre holder is a different thing altogether.

Typically I see Lyre holders fitted as standard on cornets and not fitted at all on trumpets. The marching instrument was typically a cornet in Europe.

Trumpet players of course also marched with trumpets and to facilitate fitting a Lyre to a trumpet a Lyre with a clamp was developed. The Lyre then could be fitted onto any convenient tube.

I have always found that the clamp on the adjustable finger ring would loosen at inconvenient times so the fixed ring makes a lot of sense for a serious player.

On the other hand many players dont like or use the ring to adjust intonation.

Looking at images of players like Miles Davis I see that on some images he reversed the position of the ring so that the ring was positioned way beyond reach of his fingers. This got rid of it entirely during that session.

Some players inverted the third slide when the legs on the third slide were the of equal length so that the ring hung beneath the slide. An example of an instrument that allows this is the Olds Ambassador which has legs of equal length and an adjustable ring. This instrument allows three options for getting rid of the ring entirely.
1 is to keep the adjustable ring but reverse it so the ring is extended completely beyond the slide
2 is to remove it and leave it in the case.
3 is to invert the third slide so the ring is under the slide.

Some instruments of course were narrow wrap instruments which were built with ring hanging down.

The narrow wrap Selmer with underslung ring that Sachmo played which I believe was one of the Selmer Paris Grand Prix models was an example of this as is the Conn 58B.

This is what I have seen.

I think we see eye to eye Dale great comment

Thank you

Thanks for the warm welcome trumpetplus

I had no intention of causing trouble I just saw something that clashes with my experience

As for experiments there can be experimentation without formal experiments.

The experimentation I speak of is many side by side comparisons of instruments of varied and various types and of varied construction with valve blocks in a variety of positions.

Never have I found that the instrument varies in tone richness as various valve combinations are used, as it should do if the amount of bend in the tube determines the richness of tone. I think that theory is clearly incorrect.

I have seen tones varying in instruments that have valve blocks in different locations in the tubing, sometimes in support of the theory but at other times in complete opposition to the theory and that is not how a good theory should behave. It should be consistent reliable and predictable.

If there is a theory then that theory must be supported consistently by experience and be repeatable and perform the same way every time, any failure of the theory either makes the theory incorrect or calls for further investigation at the least.

If the facts dont support the theory then either the theory is not correct or there must be another explanation.

I stand by my words, I presume your contention is my opposition to the statement that a valve block position closer to the bell yields darker tones than a valve block positioned further away from the bell, and my opposition to increased bends in the tube yielding darker tones.

I have given my reason for rejecting the theory for both, I have seen instruments with valve block closer to the bell with brighter tones than instruments with valve block further away.

In my experience from observations with instruments of all types and a lot of different designs, not as much experience as some have and certainly not as much as a good tech might have but enough experience that I should be able to see clearly whether or not the theory holds true and gives predictable results, and in my view it doesnt.

I have seen however countless examples of correlations between
heavy instrument and dark tones
mouthpiece changes and predictable tone changes
bell shape and predictable tone changes
rim shape and predictable tone changes
oral cavity changes and predictable tone changes
embouchure changes and predictable tone changes

the theories all hold up well in these other areas we can make predictable changes and these changes result in the expected brighter or darker tones.

What I will say is this, under certain circumstances of design and size of bell flare in a cornet for example the valve block must by design be closer to the bell, but if the bell flare is such that the horn plays darkly, the darkness may be interpreted as being a characteristic of the valve block position, whereas it is in truth a characteristic of the bell flare.

Could this go some way to explain why valve block position appears to affect darkness in cornets compared to darkness in trumpets.

We can compare like for like in trumpets as I have done but cornet to trumpet is not a like for like comparison. Is there a way of comparing 2 cornets with different valve block positions that might show the effect of moving the valve block.

And critically how much does that contribute to the tone.

Apologies for the length of this post

First of all there is no doubt that the members in here are all of a very high quality and any difference is not going to be due to any lack or otherwise of skills.

My own experience is that all instruments are different and that goes for differences between trumpets and trumpets between cornets and cornets and between cornets and trumpets.

They do play differently there is no doubt but it is subtle and can easily trip me up.

When I grab a cornet or a trumpet and begin to blow the instrument can easily say to me, whoa buddy just who do you think you are then it opposes me and squeeks at me. But if I blow sympathetically the instrument rewards me and plays beautifully. It can sometimes take a lot of work,

The venerable long cornet Conn 80a, sold 24,000 units over a 50 year period, you dont sell that many units if the instruments fundamentally are out of tune or stuffy. I would look elsewhere for the explanation of why.

I would suggest that maybe it is the approach of the player, the differences in air support, the embouchure, the blow, the tonal concept, the articulation, and a heap of other things that we bring to our performance that is where the main differences between the cornet and the trumpet lie.

What works on a trumpet does not always work on a cornet and vice versa.

I dont see what the fuss is.

I made a waterkey cork out of a used wine bottle cork. It worked fine and lasted years.

Most people have corks they throw out in the trash wine bars cant get rid of enough of em.

Many wine corks have a very suitable portion at the end made up of very fine grain cork and its this portion that we can attack with a craft knife.

You can make 4 water key corks out of one wine bottle cork.

If you cant find the right cork first time there will probably be around 1000 others in their wine cork bin you can select from in most wine bars.

Trim it slightly oversize and friction will keep it in place.

5 minutes work zero cost.

The only problem is making it out the door without sampling their wine.

I feel your pain Dale and I know they can be quite tricky.

They changed the design of the valves and the guides many times and made it slightly simpler as the decades moved on.

The early valve guides had the pegs in different locations in the valve blocks and that made it difficult, later they made the pegs all in the same location so that was slightly better but the guides could still jam and be problematic to position correctly.

Once you have the knack I find them simple to align and fit.

I prefer the Crysteel valves now to the more regular top sprung valves with internal springs in a cage that are in common use.

Trumpet players when they reach a good level are without exception fighters.

It is the way we are.

We constantly fight with ourselves to progress and we mold ourselves to become the best we can be.

It is evident to me that you are a fighter Vulgano Brother and this tells me you will recover.

And you will be an inspiration to others.

There is not a day goes by that I am not told how much I inspire others and I see that in you.

Few musicians recognise quite how good they are and how much they are respected in society for the joy they bring to others.

It is a privilege to know you, make a speedy recovery.