I Walk the Line

Antiphonal Brass Music - Boston Brass Section

So lets start off with me apologizing for not posting a lot this week. I am getting married this Saturday and you know, writing this stuff for you people isn't very high on my priority list at the moment. I mean the world doesn't revolve around you, so stop texting me begging for my next post; I will put a post up when I feel in the mood.

All joking aside, I am getting married so this will probably be my last post for a week or so since we leave for Seattle on Tuesday! I'm super excited about this weekend and spending the rest of my life with the girl of my dreams.

Side note you all should check out my buddy's tumblr: http://adamkoble.tumblr.com/ Great friend that is starting out in repair and doing some awesome custom work for tuba players around the Metroplex. Looking forward to some of the crazy stuff he is doing, like venting rotors!

So on to the post:
There is an indescribably feeling when you completely destroy something on accident. It happens to everyone, that terrible moment when you realize that whatever design or plan you had going in your head will no longer be attainable. The moment you begin to think of how long until you might be able to get your original design back. That my friends happened yesterday at 4:30pm. I have been lucky enough to have some friends in 'high' places and managed to land a school account of my own.

As I was plugging through the marching brass I ran into a very stubborn Mellophone tuning slide (And Thomas if you are reading don't worry). So I did what I have done hundred of times before except this one time while trying to pull it out the entire lead pipe got ripped off of the horn and crushed in a terrible way. Commence the moment I described in the above paragraph.

Being my first school account I have fielded a lot of questions to my boss and he has been super helpful. So I ran to him asking what would be better: to replace the part or fix the existing part. This is the line we as repairmen are constantly straddling. I like to think of it as a proverbial tight rope walk that happens daily. As repairmen we are constantly struggling with thoughts of: "Is that good enough?" "Will anyone see that little dent I didn't get out?" "Is this flute actually sealing? Or am I mashing the keys down too hard to get a seal?" These little moments happen to even the best repairmen. It's not like these moments are a bad thing, self-questioning can only lead to improvement. But I think that the longer you are in the field the quicker you are at coming to the realization of what should be done.

My boss is like this: Upon seeing the tubing and hearing my question he called into the Yamaha ordering center and got a price for a replacement, then went out and did a very quick glance at 'how much' it would be to fix the existing part. (Side note replacing that specific lead pipe costs $110 before shipping.) He is a firm believer in the best of people, he came out looked at the rest of the horn smiled and said, "Fix it." He then schooled me on how 'long' it should take by removing the worst part of the crushed section in a way I never would have thought.

It was that little 5 minutes that really got me thinking about the struggle up and coming repairmen face when it comes to ability vs. practicality. We all like to believe we can fix something, but how practical would it be to just replace that thing? I guess if I were to sum up this post it would be that the line we as repairmen walk sort of a fickle thing that only exists in our head, but walking that line is where you can gain a lot of wisdom and insight when it comes to practicality v. ability.

That Awkward Moment...

Dreams - The Cranberries

So everyone knows life is full of awkward moments. I think some of the most awkward moments come when you least expect it. If you don't know, I recently moved and started a my career. In an effort to not starve to death I took it upon myself to start nosing around the area looking for business. To say the least I'm already an awkward person, add in the fact I'm emailing people I have never met and the awkwardness seems to multiple. I mean in the technological age, something like emailing potential clients should seem normal right? WRONG! Apparently email is strictly for people you already know and reaching out should still be done in person. 

I just hope that I'm not shooting myself in the foot when it comes to networking. I want this career to work and I am just being active in my future. Despite what most people think Band Instrument Repair isn't about skill at all; skill comes with experience which I already wrote about. No the biggest part of this industry is who you know. This has already proved to my advantage greatly because I know a lot of people, and my boss and the owner have begun to notice my potential. 

Where I live now is actually great for me, because it is a giant untapped region when it comes to repair. There is a huge volume of work that the few Mom and Pop shops around here can't or won't handle. So my goal is to by the beginning of next year to be the primary resource for these (extremely rich) school districts. And it starts with doing freebies. Luckily for me I know some private lessons instructors in the area and maybe I can get my foot in the door that way. All I know is that with 10 days to the wedding, I need to get my act together and stop playing video games. 

Grinding Experience

Music Mood: Panama, Van Halen

NERD ALERT!

So repair is an interesting career in that it takes a lot of skill to be considered 'great'. And the only real way to get that skill is practice and experience. So when I use such a gamer term as grinding let me just say it is almost exactly that. Today was proof of the 'grinding' nature that is repair. I wouldn't say today was bad, but man did was it long and tedious. Kind of like when you are running the same instance in WoW day after day trying to get that one trinket only to never see it until it is obsolete. 

Today's grinding experience was brought to me via my good friends known as the 'flute'. (I feel like using parentheses a lot tonight so deal!) No matter how 'good' I think I am flutes always manage to knock me flat on my but and get my tires spinning the 'proverbial' mud! I know that all of this is 'good' for me, but I just wish it was as easy as clarinets are to me. It took me a mere 2 hours to overhaul a clarinet today where as I could barely do 3 flutes in that time. (For those not aware: 'overhauling' consists of removing all the keys, pads, corks, cleaning the instrument and keys and then replacing all the aforementioned items. Very time consuming)

Any way, I'm just really hoping work picks up more so the grind won't seem as tedious as it did today. And knowing that I blogged about how grinding today was, tomorrow will either be just as bad or go by without a hitch. I'm hoping for the latter but expecting the former.

Stay tuned! :D

Obligatory Post

Music Mood: 1979, Smashing Pumpkins

So here is my obligatory post for the first of many overhauls of my blog/website. Just to catch everyone up to what's going on in my life: I'm getting married to the most amazing girl I have ever met in about 3 weeks and I'm super excited about that. I am out of school now still pending a degree. I figure that will come whenever and I should just jump into work and get that experience in my belt. I hope that you will continue to put up with me as I write pedantic ravings about how 'awesome' I am. Just know I am doing that as a self promotion as well as a way of sharing with others what I really do from 10-6 everyday. I'm not an egomanic. I am, however, quite good at what I do and that is repairing band instruments. 

I recently got a full time position at Brook Mays Music in Irving, TX and I am hoping to expand while I stay there. I recently bought business cards so peeps might be reading this from those if so, "Welcome!" I am trying to attract as much business as possible including the elusive school district accounts. But for now I'll just say "Hello" again and actually start updating this quasi-daily. 

Goodnight!

I'm Back in the Saddle Again

So it seems that it has been way too long since I last posted a blog on recent happening in the trumpet side of my world. To correct this fallacy I have decided that from hence forth I will be blogging once a week with past developments. So every Sunday in the afternoon be looking out.

Since it has been so long I pretty much forgotten everything I wanted to talk about so I will try to remember as I go along. I have some new pictures up of 2 projects that are currently in progress so that is where I will begin. If you look through the pictures I have posted to Picasa you will come across few pictures of a Bb Getzen Eterna cornet with a nice gold finish. Well a few months ago I decided that I wanted to to try converting it to play in C. In theory this is a simple process. Essentially you have to lose 12% of the tubing across the entire horn cutting tubing from all of the tuning slides, the bell and the lead pipe (leed pipe, not lead pipe). I however had no idea how much tubing to cut across the horn so I set out on a research project that I am still working on and will put up here once more significant data has been collected.

So after measuring different horn makers I decided that the best course of action was to cut the tubes to the length of Getzen C tubes. With some guidance from a colleague and a very old metal lathe I set to work. If you check the pictures that have recently been uploaded you will notice that I am not completely finished. I had the tubes the correct length but to put it bluntly what I was doing was guess and check work. Top that off with the fact that since I cut the tubing the bell wouldn't fit back on I was put off schedule by a few months.

Luckily I have a pretty good head on my shoulders for problem solving (thanks mom and dad) and decided to design my own brace. I based the design loosely on the Edwards Company's Joe Allesi brace design (Google it). And what came out was pretty great. I have some work to do to perfect the production of the brace but it is very stable and very sturdy as well as quite heavy giving the horn a darker sound. So after the few weeks it took to make that brace I had the horn back together and to my surprise it played in C! Although it was 20 cents flat. So that is why the horn is still in pieces I am fine tuning the tube lengths as well as planning out finishes (I'm thinking satin).

The other horn that was uploaded is a early 70's Olds Ambassador that was just a gem I found on eBay for about 40 bucks. It plays phenomenally and will be the first Bb trumpet that I convert into a C trumpet. Pictures will be coming as the process begins and continues.

Well that is all I have for right now. Seeing as I have been on an absence I might post another blog later tonight if I can think of anything else trumpet-y on my mind.

Until next time,

Daniel

Temporary Hiatus

So it's been a few days since my last post. Sorry for the wait but I've been ridiculously busy with school and planning a wedding.

But that is neither here nor there this is about trumpets!

So in my absence from blogging I have had the opportunity to work on some really nice horns and some really bad horns. I should have pics up before the end of the night. But I'll just give a brief description of what work was done:

First up is a Conn Vintage One Flugelhorn. The main crook of the bell from the casing to the bore extension was crushed after someone decided it needed stepping on. My boss Ann MacMillan did an amazing job getting the tube back into the right shape. I was responsible for cleaning/polishing. I did run into a slight problem that required the dis/re-assembling of the 3rd valve slide.

Second is a Kanstul rip off of Monet's Prana 3. It LOOKS like a great horn really heavy and has a beautiful finish, but unfortunately it has a small bore and is really really tight. There was nothing seriously wrong with this horn besides it's pinch-y sound.

Next is a horn I don't have photos of but I'll try and get some soon. It is a Schilke 3B and it was really trashed. The horn is a gigging horn so it didn't get a lot of down time. The horn was being eaten from the inside out from "red rot" aka de-zinctification. There were multiple cracks along the bell and nothing was working properly besides the fact that it played. After cleaning the horn of what we could and getting everything working, my boss came up with an en genius solution to the multiple bell crook cracks. Pictures will show how she has a normal brace style patch along the outside of the crook and along the side she beaded a piece of wire giving it an almost tuba like look.

Regular updates should be incoming from now on since school is winding down to an end.

Perfect Porting

So fyi: rant incoming.

So here is my beef: Bob Reeves valve alignments. Bob Reeves charges people "X" amount of money to take your horns valves and align them perfectly along the ports. The process is simple he has neoprene and hard plastic spacers made to a specific legnth. He then measures how off the porting is in your horn and cuts away the valve stem til the ports are within thousands of a millimeter of "perfect."

There is only one problem: while the verticle alignment might be perfect the horizontal alignment remains imperfect.

The facts are these: When a horn's valves are manufactured the valve guide is cut to a specific width which is less than the width of the corresponding slots in the casing. This isn't a flaw, it has to be this way because the piston would fail to work properly if the guide and slot were pefectly fit.

Morover the the space that is through the upper part of the piston is not flush for this same reason. A perfect fit would lead to a phenominal amount friction leading to sticking and terrible action.

This micro space can be exacerbated with poor production quality which is seen very often amongst the major brands. Therefor if you factor this in you ccome to the conclusion that your valves will hardly ever be perfect horizontally.

I challenge you! Open your second valve slide annd look in towards your third valve. You will definitely be able to see your casing.

Now think about this: knowing this is a very common occurrance do our horns ever seem off? Of course not! If they did we wouldn't be playing them!

So if it doesn't affect our sound or playing at all why would we pay money to fix a problem that isn't really there? We shouldn't. What comes standard from the factory is not only adequate but really the only sensible option.

So there, that is my beef with valve alignments.