I haven't been following this thread, so if I'm duplicating efforts here, sorry.
I could be wrong, and Kendall or someone else may correct me, but I think Walter Lawson would put some really heavy oil (10W-30?) on the valves to check if they were leaking. If it played better, you most likely needed the valves worked on. My $.02. --- On Thu, 2/24/11, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Hornlist] Improvements to a Paxman 25A To: [email protected] Date: Thursday, February 24, 2011, 1:50 PM Here's the deal with my Paxman. While it's not very good in the high range, it kills and filets just about anything I've ever played in the low range. I have tried about 100 different horns trying to find something that I could use for low horn playing without a lot of additional effort and no horn has really come close to this one (for me). I can play extremely loud (with a decent sound) down there, but I can also play very VERY soft. For example, the Tchaik 5 2nd horn solo is a lot easier because it's almost effortless to play soft down there and I can incorporate plenty of dynamic contrast. I've played a few other Paxman 25s (As, Ls, Ms, and different years) and this one has beat them all. It does okay in the high range, but not as well as I'd like it to, so that's why I'd like to push it a little further. The sound in all ranges is absolutely wonderful, though. I'm pretty sure the mouthpiece isn't the problem (as I usually use a specific cup or range of cups for each horn I play on to prevent that), but it could be as Bob Osmun suggested, a compression issue. That would cost me about $1200 (versus about half that for a leadpipe). But then again, if you consider the fact that a lot of people might spend $500 on a screw bell conversion, $600 for a new leadpipe, or even $1500 for a new bell or other improvements, it seems reasonable. Plenty of people have taken their Conn 8Ds and have spent an extra thousand or two improving them. It's possible another horn would be great, but I highly doubt I'll need to spend more than $1500 to improve this horn, and it's far from crappy to begin with. It's all in all a very nice horn that has served its purpose rather well. -William In a message dated 2/24/2011 1:40:08 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, [email protected] writes: Having done just about every modification you could think of, including a few "terminal" experiments (oops), to hundreds if not thousands of horns over the last many years, Here's what I'd do. As has been wisely said, first make sure the horn is mechanically sound. If you have leaky valves and leaky tuning slides, nothing else is going to help much. Second, as has also been mentioned, make sure the mouthpiece fits the leadpipe correctly. If it doesn't, you will have to work harder for pitch, response, range and sound. Don't worry, everything else will still be ok. Ha Ha! Well, step 2 is the cheapest and will help even if your horn is a bit leaky. Step 1 could cost quite a bit of money, which means maybe step 3 actually isn't such a bad idea. Step 3 I think was suggested tongue in cheek, but if you're thinking about laying out a bunch of money for a valve rebuild and then a bunch more money to experiment with leadpipes, mouthpieces, freezing, thawing, magic incantations, changing the air column in the horn to pure nitrogen etc., all of course with no guarantee of success, well, why not just buy a new/different horn that you know you like because you tried it out? International Horn Workshop coming up soon. Great place to try lots of horns and sell your old crappy one! If nothing appeals, then you may find out that you still like your present horn after all. - Steve Mumford _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/valkhorn%40aol.com _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/tower_music%40yahoo.com _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
