a nearly 50-year-old King baritone horn & a Covid shot

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bloke
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a nearly 50-year-old King baritone horn & a Covid shot

Post by bloke »

This belongs to a band in a town which is nearly 200 miles from blokeplace and backed up against the Mississippi River.
It appears to be a c. 1976 instrument - a satin silver King baritone horn, seemingly bought new by the school. The black rounded case (square King metal logo on the lid) is in good enough shape. The instrument itself was one of those "I dare you get any of these valve caps and slides unstuck without tearing it up" old school horns - and (of course) all beat up. I removed the mouthpipe and receiver flange to repair it, but I didn't undo anything else. One of the upper return slide braces was undone, so that's back together. Of course, that upper return slide was stuck, and - if some back-o'-music store technician had commenced to beatin' on their slide pliers - they could have easily ended up trashing the entire instrument.

Anyway...I think it looks pretty good - and it's clean/shiny.

I only had to replace one case latch. 😎👍

The school OWNS several euphoniums (needing only one or two) but I believe the school's all-state euphonium player was intrigued, so the teacher let them put this instrument in the repair pile.

Everything they handed us to repair was a woodwind instrument EXCEPT this one. The band will (actually 😲 ) be within only FIFTEEN miles of blokeplace on Friday night (foobaw game), so we're handing everything back to them at that event. Mrs. bloke just finished the next-to-last instrument, and the last one is a pretty-good make of wood clarinet - which needs a long crack pinned (isn't cracked all the way through, but she ain't gonna let it) and then a complete repad job. After that, she's done with all the woodwind stuff for them. The instrument she just finished repairing was an Adler bassoon. Many bassoonists tend to group Mönnig (Mœnnig) and Adler bassoons together as "hey: If you can't afford an upper-model Fox bassoon, those - in good shape are certainly way better than Bundy or Linton bassoons, and also - in the opinion of many - better than (German-made) Schreiber" bassoons. The band director asked if they should get it working, we asked back if someone wanted to learn to play it, they showed us the kid who wanted to learn to play it, so we responded, "then...OF COURSE!"

Subtracting my typically-generously-timed bloke lunch break/siesta, this was probably a three-or-four hour gig (chem-clean/rinse/silver-brightening-dip/rinse/hand-polishing wastes an awful lot of time :smilie6: ...oh yeah: I HATE case repairs...even minor ones).

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These users thanked the author bloke for the post (total 2):
York-aholic (Tue Sep 03, 2024 11:08 pm) • Bessonguy (Wed Sep 04, 2024 3:41 am)


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Re: a nearly 50-year-old King baritone horn & a Covid shot

Post by York-aholic »

I see what you did there with that ambiguous thread title.

I’m glad to see Covid carrying on just fine.
Some old Yorks, Martins, and perhaps a King rotary valved CC
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bloke
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Re: a nearly 50-year-old King baritone horn & a Covid shot

Post by bloke »

Yeah he's pretty amazing. I'm so very lucky to have that cat here.

The bell rim of that King baritone that was one of the most resistant I've ever encountered as far as getting it back into a flat plane. Tougher than some old springy sousaphones even.
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