comments: "water key broken" [POLL !!!]

[bloke]

Hell yeah, I'm working on the 4th.
I ain't no gubmunt implohee.

OK...
Peeps complain 'cause I never put "before" pictures, but - this time - I needed more coffee and a restroom break, so...

You get to pick one or the other in a POLL: after pictures of time spend in the defubarization.

me...?? I'd pick TIME, because everyone knows what a no-dents marchin' bear-tone looks like (I'm NOT doing any buffing, fwiw.)

[bloke]

a tie...and check out the overwhelming interest... 1:1

Oh well.

Here's the thing:

It took me about 25 minutes to completely unwhack all of that denting, but (sadly for me) it took an additional 40 minutes
to

- pull the main and #1 body-mounted slide assemblies back to where they belong (BOTH so as the slides would slide in nicely AND so as the #1 piston would - once again - move up-and-down freely). Once that mess was unraveled, there was all the mickey-mouse crap:
- new valve felts (so as the pistons didn't supply a percussion section)
- replacing a too-worn-back-to-catch-in-the-slot #2 guide with a new one (with the new one having its steel sandwich too long past the plastic and dragging in the casing slot...so a few moments of messing around with that)
- removing the broken water key (which some strong-thumbed dolt had broken BECAUSE it was rusted to the hinge screw, which I had to break free WITHOUT breaking the screw)...and then FINDING a replacement Yamaha water key, and then (actually) replacing it
- corks on the water keys
- I also found that I had to braze a crack shut in the #1 slide bow, and also (using the #3 slide as a lever) pull up the #2 slide outside slide tubes - which had been mushed into the #1 casing knuckles.













I may have charged a good bit for that hour, but the hour wasn't all of it. I also had to

- go get it
- load, unload
- type up a quote, and email the PDF
- load, unload, deliver
- wait a long time for the damn money
(The quote won't even be approved until sometime this week, but - if I waited for all of these quotes to be approved - NONE of these schools would have their crap un-destroyed in time for their mid-July band camps.)

I'm sure I charged less than NYC or other yankee-cities prices.
Maybe (??) an hour or so wasn't so bad, but (consider these other bullet points) I'm glad I didn't charge any less.

At least, there was no lead soldering involved in all this mess.

[DonO.]

These horns lead a very rough life. Is it possible to feel pity for an inanimate object?

[arpthark]

These horns lead a very rough life. Is it possible to feel pity for an inanimate object?

Given enough time and perspiration, it's certainly possible for an inanimate object to feel pitty.

[bloke]

This one is just fine now. I kept monkeying with the first slide trying to get it to work just right, and I finally realized that the reason the two tubes attached to the valve casing were parallel - yet slightly closer together than the ones on the slide - is because those tubes both needed to be bent down a little bit lower and to the right.. a little bit more than I had bent them when I first got everything to working. Once I did that, the distance across the two tubes matched the slide,and it works really quickly and effortlessly - just like one that hasn't been damaged.
Pretty much, this instrument is ready to be refinished - if someone wanted to do that, but it ain't going to happen.
I do think the band directors are more clever who purchase lacquered marching instruments, because they can either be touched up in the worn areas and sprayed with clear - if they want to, or they can be completely refinished for considerably less cost than resilvering one... not to mention the less expensive original acquisition cost. Silver plating gets ruined once two or three solder joints have to be repaired and the bell has been creased

[DonO.]

When I was in HS band, and forced to play a beat to death Sousaphone (they were all like that), we used to smear Vaseline over the worn spots, at least the big ones, before shows and competitions. It was a helpful temporary solution I guess.

[bloke]

When I was in HS band, and forced to play a beat to death Sousaphone (they were all like that), we used to smear Vaseline over the worn spots, at least the big ones, before shows and competitions. It was a helpful temporary solution I guess.

Drum corps carry that 2-in wide silver metallic tape on tours and to competitions, and they tape over the brown areas on their instruments with that stuff.

Schools typically aren't interested in using Brasso on brown areas, cleaning it off carefully with lacquer thinner and a polishing cloth and then spraying over with clear - particular since most of their rattle can skills would involve the clear running and clouding up white, but there are some brass-colored lacquers and enamels sold in rattle cans that come really close to looking like shiny brass, these days. When I sprayed that cast brace on that really ugly Conn short action, that certainly was not the stuff, but there is such. Even Nikolas offers some really convincing additive to their 2105 clear lacquer that looks like shiny brass... not completely of course, but certainly from sixty or a hundred feet away.

Regarding this particular school's set of marching instruments, most of them are brown with a little lacquer left on them, and I haven't received any feedback asking me to see about improving the appearance of their surfaces. I've only been asked to straighten them out, smooth them out, and make them work.

The students at this particular school perform remarkably well, and I'm not just referring to how well they march around on football fields, but how well they perform in concert situations. Further, the band director programs actual music for them to play, rejecting band pieces and pieces written to "grade five" or "grade 6" or whatever. Sometimes when he takes them to concert festivals, he has to get permission to play the pieces that he programs, because they aren't on so-called lists. Again, he's interested in the instruments being in good condition (and children today are just different, and are very hard on equipment - for reasons discussed in the past here), but this particular band director doesn't seem too interested in shiny.

I have a band director degree that is ancient, and even an ancient teaching certificate, but would never be a band director. It's just too hard. With all of the false allegations that could be charged to a band director by students, in particular it would be hazardous to form an all-girl band, but as far as damage to equipment would be concerned, the cost of annual repairs would be microscopic, were a high school band to be an all girl high school band. Girls just don't tear up stuff up like boys do.

[bloke]

This is the next day, and one of their instruments remaining was Yamaha marching euphonium. I think I charged roughly $120 more than I charged on the marching baritone. I'm glad I did. There was a lot to do.

Everything works, everything's straight, and it's now in the same condition: no dents and mostly brown

I don't really see the point of marching euphoniums, any more than I see the point of marching with flutes. You can't hear them outdoors. In addition to that, marching euphoniums are really awkward to carry.

Repairing the third valve casing was interesting. I had to release a lot of tension.

I wonder if these things are dropped, or if they are thrown.

[York-aholic]

Drum corps carry that 2-in wide silver metallic tape on tours and to competitions, and they tape over the brown areas on their instruments with that stuff.

That silver tape came in mighty handy the summer I marched. While standing in an arc at the top of a hill, we did a pretty snappy "horns up"...

...and the contra (Kanstul) next to me had the bell bust the braces and the bell to bottom bow ferrule solder and the bell went flying and tumbling down the hill. It was pretty entertaining as the guy stood there rigidly with a contra without a bell on his shoulder while several of us burst out laughing.

That 2" shiny silver tape saved the day (the next several days actually) until their were able to get the bell soldered back on.

[bloke]

I'm quitting for the day - plowing through this particular school's instruments. I went back out there and worked until 10:00 PM and I got one of those stuffy Dynasty marching baritones repaired satisfactorily. The main tuning slide tubes were both stuck really badly, and the last person - who tried to get it out - yanked the outside slide tubes forward and sideways. Fun fun fun !

Andrew Miller - who plays in Birmingham - is headed over here tomorrow morning. It will be nice to see him again. I think all he wants me to do is to undo some weird stuff that someone else did to one of his tubas, so that should be easy.

Getting back to this school's pile of horns, it's the worst pile of all of them, and I'm really eager to get to the end of this pile, even though some of the piles are larger.

When I came in tonight, the cats looked at me and said, "okay, so you're back in from working your @$$ off.. what about some cat treats?

topics: corps
Now that they've gone to B-flat and F instruments and three valves, it's time for them to go to sousaphones, so the bass voice can actually be heard consistently, and it doesn't sound like a bunch of grunting.

[Breavdah]

This is the next day, and one of their instruments remaining was Yamaha marching euphonium. I think I charged roughly $120 more than I charged on the marching baritone. I'm glad I did. There was a lot to do.

Everything works, everything's straight, and it's now in the same condition: no dents and mostly brown

I don't really see the point of marching euphoniums, any more than I see the point of marching with flutes. You can't hear them outdoors. In addition to that, marching euphoniums are really awkward to carry.

Repairing the third valve casing was interesting. I had to release a lot of tension.

I wonder if these things are dropped, or if they are thrown.

The Yamaha marching Euph sounds the same as the Yamaha marching Bari. There's no point to it.

The point of marching Bari/Euph is to sound outside, HAMMERED, like trombones sound indoors, played conservatively

[bloke]

phone mics in the stands can hear (just barely) marching baritones in the mix...but marching euphoniums are too mellow, and flutes (vs. piccolos) just don't put out any sound - at least, not compared to the trumpets and drums.


I'll be finished with this school's incredible pile of instruments today (Sunday).
I'm pretty sure that c. 40% of these were things they pulled down from the attic.

That having been said, all the suspected-of-being-attic-salvage stuff is now JUST FINE, and (no dents / no issues) what they spent to "put 'em back the way they wuz" was a helluva lot less than buying new...even if Jinbao (which none of it is).

This PARTICULAR band director (a very fine band, a very hard-working band director, a very musical and imaginative band director - but who relies on assistants, as he's not any sort of organizer type) brought in someone they really respect to critique everything, sometime this last year.

The band director told me was that "The only real problem you have is the condition of your equipment" (and that person only saw the NON-attic stuff).
I suspect this band director took that critique to heart, based on this mountain we picked up.

Yesterday, I brought back (from the dead) an Olds - made by Blessing stencil (M.E.N.C. - a discounter out of New Jersey, decades ago...name INTENTIONALLY meant to be confused with N.E.M.C., I suspect...) marching baritone. The mouthpipe wasn't rotten, but it was busted, folded, and cracked. I straightened it, smoothed it, brazed it, removed the receiver and put a tapered sleeve over it, removed some epic denting, freed some impossible slides, straightened back out and aligned a seemingly-hopeless main tuning slide bow, and (other than the finish and the sleeve - particularly with the Bauerfend European valveset that these utililzed) it's not far from "new" condition. It was completely brown, so I 1/2-@$$ buffed around on it - to give some kid a headstart on polishing it.

Today, I put a new (as the original was literally squished flat) silver mouthpipe on a beat-up Jupiter mellophone. (I couldn't believe that I actually had one in stock - as I had forgotten to order a replacement...but I DID have one) a whole bunch of solder joints, a whole bunch of lining things up...I sorta doubt that too many back-o-music store folk would care to tackle that...and yes, I know that dozens of peeps could manage that job...but not "hundreds"...in addition to the other messed up (mangled slides/alignment/etc.) stuff.

The last few schools will be less stuff per school...and then one big trailer-load for a major university...At least Mrs. bloke already repaired that university's ten messed-up piccolos. (None of the rest of their piccolos needed repairs...We look over their instruments - one-by-one - on site, quote on site, and then only haul the actually-busted stuff to blokeplace.) ...It's sorta funny that ALL of a university's marchin'-band piccolos will fit in a box in which buffing compound was shipped to us.