A complete assessment of a vintage horn by Tom Turner

There are some things that could have happened to your trumpet through the years that could contribute to the horn becoming even more stuffy, tight, and harder to blow. I'll list them below:

1. MOUTHPIECE TO RECEIVER GAP PROBLEMS
-- Some mouthpieces of that era used different diameters and tapers to the mouthpiece shank.
-- Additionally, even if your current mouthpiece's taper is correct, the receiver may be worn (probably from years of someone twisting in the mouthpiece or accidentally cramming the mouthpiece in the receiver and reaming the receiver out). This would cause a loss of gap.
When the correct gap is not maintained or attainable, it can really screw up how a horn plays. Take it to a good technician for analysis.

2. WORN OUT VALVES
If the valves leak due to being worn out, the horn will "go away" on the lower octave notes particularly and become much harder to play.
Again, a good technician can make sure your valves have decent compression. If they don't, the valves still CAN be rebuilt! Again, the technician can guide you in this direction. The retail cost would be about $100 per valve (possibly less)

3. MISALIGNED VALVES
Alignment felts shrink, harden and wear out! If the up and down stroke alignment is not precise the horn will play stuffy and even the intonation of notes can suffer.

4. LEAKY SLIDES AND/OR SPIT VALVES
It is amazing how many old horns now have leaky slides that kind of fit loose in a horn. And sometimes a spit valve key will be misaligned or even have bad, leaky cork.

5. STRESS PROBLEMS
If a horn is ever dropped and damaged, stress can be introduced to the horn that can totally prevent the horn from blowing free and easy! Some technicians make quick dent repairs but fail to disassemble all the parts in the area where the tubing got bent out of shape.
Horns are assembled new WITHOUT STRESS. Each part simply fits perfectly into the other without being forced into place to cause stress. It is very important that the horn NOT have any restrictive stress where bent and now ill-fitting pieces are under tension and pressure from the accident.
Again, the horn can STILL be disassembled and PROPERLY repaired so that all parts again are not under stress then the horn is reassembled. A Stress-free horn will sing but a horn with stress will be harder to play.

A NEW LEADPIPE?
I wouldn't do that until the above mentioned areas of common symptoms is professionally accessed. If all these potential problems are fixed, and the horn is still hard to blow there are two choices:
1. Leave it alone and enjoy it as what it is - a very old trumpet from a bygone era when the predominant trumpet design might still be a "peashooter."
2. Put another leadpipe on the horn that you've tested against other variances in leadpipes until you find the exact taper that makes the horn play as you like. However, by this time you'll have a lot of money tied up in a small bore trumpet that was known to be a bright-sounding trumpet anyway.

HEAVY VALVE CAPS?
This might tighten the slots a little, and MIGHT darken it a little, but this would be something that I wouldn't think would give you the best results overall. Heavy caps can just as easily lock down the slotting TOO MUCH.
Here's a cheap way to test if heavy caps will matter:
Take at least the lower valve cap with you to a local plumbing supply company and find a heavy, BRASS washer with a hole in it's center that is only slightly smaller in outer diameter than your valve.
Place it in your THIRD VALVE lower cap, slightly to one side all the way so that when you tighten your lower THIRD VALVE cap the washer will snug itself firmly between the bottom of the valve's casing and the lower cap. This, in essence, turns your conventional cap into a "heavy cap."
The washer won't cost more than a quarter or so, and is just as effective as the expensive heavy caps, IMHO.

WHY ONLY ONE 25 CENT HEAVY BRASS WASHER?
OK - since they are cheap, go ahead and get TWO. The second valve virtually never benefits from a heavy cap anyway, but the first valve SOMETIMES.
On most horns, a single washer on the third valve will tighten the slots a little. On a few horns, just a single washer on the FIRST valve slide will do the trick. On a very tiny number of horns, a combination of washers (or expensive heavy caps) on BOTH the 1st and 3rd valves will be the ticket.
Frankly though, if a horn is properly designed and in perfect playing condition, heavy caps WILL change things slightly, but NOT in a good way!!! This is because heavy caps can, and will also make the horn less responsive to play (in order to tighten up the slots - and as a by-product of killing some of the overtones).
If slots get too tight it becomes hard to do glissandos, rips and falls for jazz work.
As I said, most successful horns don't need heavy caps, for they were properly designed to balance the blow requirements perfectly so the slots would be tight enough for legit work, but loose enough for jazz.

Keep in mind though: ANYTHING one changes on a trumpet will also almost always make a CHANGE in how the horn blows or sounds - thus the popular after-market items available. HOWEVER... different is not always - or even slightly - better in the long run.

Conn Victor New Wonder

Brass instruments are such a great collector's item for several reasons:
- Commercially produced trumpets have been around for over a century, which is a long time - twice as long as electric guitars, for instance.
- If they are not abused, they last a long time - there are plenty of functional instruments from the 50s and 40s and quite a few from the 20s. The cutoff seems to be around 1915 - stuff that's earlier than that and still functional in any sense of the word is exceedingly rare.
- Many are reasonably abundant, having been made by thousands, and thus not exorbitantly expensive - this depends on what one collects, of course, but there is plenty of interesting stuff that does not cost an arm and a leg.
- There are plenty of technical challenges in making and playing brass, and in a century of development, a lot of smart people working on them came up with a variety of solutions. Some are ingenious and some are just kooky; some stuck but many fell by wayside... Now only the very-highest profile makers like Monette dare to experiment and be different; in the golden age of brass every company tried to be original and inventive.


Conn 80A (Victor AND/OR New Wonder) is a perfect fit for all of the above. They are good vintage horns, made between about 1915 and the 60s. They have a whole range of experimental features: the "opera glass" tuning slide behind the first valve, a "quick-change mechanism" ("a system whereby the slides connected to the valves are automatically pulled out the correct amount when the main tuning slide is pulled out to A"), and two sets of slides, LP/HP (for low pitch of A=435 / high pitch of A=457, see "Musical Pitch and International Agreement" by Weinstein in TAJIL as reprinted here). There is also an adjustable valve spring gadget inside the pistons that allows to regulate the spring tension - not visible, of course, but still interesting and AFAIK not implemented by anyone else.


I was fortunate enough to get one last December. Mine is from 1918 and seems to never have been through a serious repair; no major dents or anything; everything is in place and working - key-change thing, high-pitch slides, even a mute seems to be original. It came with a mouthpiece that's an exact replica of the one I am using on my trumpet - a deep V cup Holton - which makes it easier for me to switch back and forth. I think the bore is .484 (one of the largest-bore cornets ever, they say), and the sound is massive; it plays real nice and easy all the way to the top. The biggest problem is the one you would expect: valve wear. It is still playable and above the middle G it's hardly noticeable, but as you descend, the attacks start to deteriorate, and it takes a long time to warm up on it. I kept reading about leaky valves and wondering what those are - now I know...


(Most of the) quick-change mechanism is visible in the pic above. Small shafts on the tuning slide pull on the system of levers that pulls out each of the slides by different amounts, keeping the horn in tune. I don't often switch to A, although it does happen - mostly on occasions of impromptu jams in guitarist's favorite keys. The sound of this thing is already as dark as it can be without trespassing into the French horn territory, and when in A, it gets even more so, maybe even too much...
I did not shoot the extra "high pitch" slides as they are pretty much useless and just sit in the case.
Incidentally, the present value of A=440Hz was officially standardized across the European nations by a provision in the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, so in a way, this instrument became conceptually obsolete at birth.



Grammar nazi says: I hate it when people call cornets "coronets".