Learning from some simple trumpet mods

[gocsick]

Not a tuba but I spent some time doing some basic mods to one of the Olds Ambassador Trumpets.

I Moved 3rd slide ring to underslung and replaced the original Olds waterkey with an Amado

Then I wanted a thumb saddle on the first valve slide, so I reversed the top tube and moved the braces to make it work. Spent a lot of time lining things up so there was only a little lapping (using blokes Lava suds a mineral oil trick) needed to make the slide fast and smooth.

I also removed the front bell brace..

I didn't bother trying to buff the old solder pads off.. I just cleaned the moten solder off with a cotton cloth.. everything is flat and smooth.. just silver colored where the water key, 3rd slide ring, and braces were.

Lessons learned from the process
1) Getting slides in plane and parallel is tedious business
2) Removing excess solder is much more time consuming than slowing down and being careful with heat and flux.

Also Olds apparently hard soldered the inner slide tubes to the nickel silver rings because it stayed firmly attached even under a MAP Pro flame.

Next up is replace leadpipe with a Bach 43 blank and converting to a reverse tuning slide. Probably won't be until holiday break though.

[bloke]

Original Chicago Benge trumpets featured the #3 slide ring in that position, along with earlier genuine (made in France) French Besson (which Benge copied, of course).

I've always thought that these were good trumpets. I'm not sure how much difference a mouth pipe tube is going to make, but who am I to tell someone else to not give it a shot.

The slide ferrules fit very tightly. (This is common, not just Olds, and also with tubas.) I'm not sure I'd say they were press fit, but they are tight. I've been able to get them off by supporting the slide tube with a slide expander and tapping repeatedly on the ferrule with slide pliers repeatedly while heating (but not getting carried away and just heating it to oblivion). It's not fun. It's also quite difficult to get these apart without maring anything. (They didn't build these instruments with the intention of someone taking them back apart, which is something that customers don't seem to understand.)

[gocsick]

I've always thought that these were good trumpets. I'm not sure how much difference a mouth pipe tube is going to make, but who am I to tell someone else to not give it a shot.

Who knows?? I figure it is a cheap way to learn something new and have fun messing around in the garage. Screwing around with goodwill priced student instruments is much cheaper than cars, motorcycles, whiskey, gambling, fishing, guns etc.

[bloke]

cars - old and utility-grade (whereby everything works, and even the 2XX,XXX ones' air-conditioners work)
motorcycles - Every friend who bought one ended up in the hospital.
whiskey - yes, but extremely limited consumption (probably the equivalent of a bottle of scotch annually...if that much)
gambling - total expenditure on this to lifetime to date: approx. $5 (OK...I've owned some stocks and bonds, and lived/entered into cities - even parking my car in post-civilization-era cities for a few minutes...I even ate sushi once, but you're not referring to those types of risks.)
fishing - a collection of $10 yard-sale/thrift-store rod-reed assemblies, only in my own ponds, and only for dinner (not sport) and I'm pretty good at rounding up "dinner" in 5 - 10 minutes.
guns - yeah...I'm not discussing this in a public forum, but - in general - there are tools - here on site - to assist in accomplishing many types of jobs.

musical instruments - as needed (ie. "I can't believe bloke is selling his ___________"...I no longer needed my __________.)

stuff - is stuff.
my stuff (including stuff that I put together myself) - is not a museum of my life. It's just stuff.


Your work - looks neat. Good job.
mouthpipe - now that I'm on the laptop, I see the red-rot, so why not try out another mouthpipe.

[1 Ton Tommy]

@Bloke, I'm pleased you've reached that level of enlightenment where stuff isn't a museum of your life and connected to your identity. I have not reached that point and it causes friction with my wife who fears I will die leaving her with boxes of obsolete bicycle parts, a few old British motorcycles and their boxes of parts which she has no idea about, and many horns.

This is not an idle fear, I agree. A friend of mine collected antique trucks, like semi-tractors and their parts. Five years later she only just begun to shrink the pile and she' now 80.

[bloke]

Yeah, if I don't need something...
Even if I spent hundreds of hours building it and it's quite exquisite (mostly luck in a little knowledge) it's for sale if I no longer need it, particularly if some enthusiastic person has money burning a hole in their pocket.

[gocsick]

Finally got around to replacing the leadpipe. It had some red rot, but really wasn't too bad.

Ordered a Bach 43 taper leadpipe from O'Malley in nickel silver. It was a raw drawn pipe and needed be cut to the right length and right section of the taper. Since the taper is much faster on the new pipe and the nickel silver pipe is a little thicker wall than the original ambassador one, I had to bore out the mouthpiece receiver about 0.010" to get it fit.

I thought about boring it a little deeper to shorten the receiver gap, since the Olds factory gap is quite large. I ended up not because of I didn't like it there was no going back.

Very happy with the result. Definitely feels more open and the slotting isn't quite so rigid. It still locks in well but it just feels more responsive and easy.

[bloke]

I've always liked Olds most anything.

If anyone has any trumpet projects they want to undertake in the future that are good solid student models that need mouth pipe tubes, I have a box of generics.

Just give me the overall length including insertion into the outside slide tube and the o.d. diameter needed for insertion into the back of the receiver. (If it's one of those really old-school Conn trumpets with the small bore and the super long overpart covering the mouth pipe tube for several inches, I'd prefer to not try to adapt these to fit that.)

[gocsick]

Not necessarily a simple mod, but part of the continued learning by doing… I present the C Olds Ambassador trumpet. Not as exciting or taxing as @the elephant’s 186 cut… but I’m pretty dang excited about it. It started life as a trashed $30 facebook marketplace 1954 Olds Ambassador. The bell was crumpled, the 3rd slide was kinked, and the bell bow was pretty well crushed. So I decided to turn it into a C trumpet… I have absolutely no need for a C trumpet… but I figured it would give me the most educational bang for my donor instrument buck.

Cut to the chase.. it went well. Main bugle is 15 cents sharp with the slide all the way in and sits right on with a little pull. 3rd partial G is a little saggy but not too bad. Somehow I managed to do a decent job of calculating the valve circuit lengths and normal trumpet fingerings work just fine.








Before I cut I took a series of intonation measurements with the valve slides at different positions and then fit a line. I then back extrapolated to figure out how much I had to remove. I ended up taking 6” off the main bugle 2.5” off the lead pipe, 1” of each slide leg, and 1.5” off the bell tail.

I didn’t really take pictures in progress because I honestly didn’t think it would turn out this well. Dentwork was all done with my makeshift stuff. Bell was rolled out between an Italian rolling pin and car body fender dolly to burnish, it still has a lot a wrinkling. Bell bow was fixed using a set of ball bearing in 32nd inch increments, it is round. I did get all the knuckles dent free but there were a lot of little dings I didn’t chase. I forget to fix the dent on the 3rd slide crook, until AFTER I put the slide back together, so it is still there. I saved the inner slides by working it on a mandrel I turned on the lathe.

1st and 3rd slides were reversed. I was able to save the kinked 3rd slide inners working them on a mandrel I made on the lather. Reversing 3rd was a lot trickier than I thought because of the was Olds made the slide, it involved some careful lathe work to turn an internal shoulder so It could slip over the valve block. It was a little scratchy still because I couldn’t get the inners 100% perfect with my little hand burnisher. It’s movable on the fly but not super smooth. 1st slide sticks if you extend it too much. Because the slide is a little too loose the slide is so short that it cocks a little and binds. I need make a slide stop for it to prevent that happening.

[bloke]

Congratulations.

I don't like taking pictures while I'm repairing stuff because my hands are dirty, I get that stuff all over my phone, and also it slows down my progress.

I'm not criticizing others pictures of their in progress work, and they're interesting to look at, but I guess I'm just not that considerate. (Perhaps, my techniques are hillbilly, and I don't want people to see that I'm not using a bunch of expensive tools.)

Someone - years ago - had me do a C trumpet cut down. After failing to talk them out of it (because it was one of those blessing ML model B flat trumpets in really nice shape), I hurried through it, and happily it also turned out pretty good.

Since then though I haven't responded to their emails or texts, assuming it's similar types of things that they want done.

[gocsick]

Well so far I've gotten two requests from friends to make C Ambassador trumpets for them.

One is a Philadelphia area amateur/semi-pro trumpet player who does a lot of theater pit work. He still has his Reynolds Medalist from high school in the 1970s (obviously not his only trumpet) and thought it would be a gas to have a matching one in C. He was Masters thesis advisor and a long time mentor, so I am very happy to do it for him. I just got the donor trumpet in the post yesterday.

The other is for a local jazz/commercial player. He plays C trumpet once a year for Easter service.. it always takes him a week or so of practice to get used to his Bach C.. This year he borrowed mine because it felt more Bb and was able to get performance ready in a day instead. He provided me an LA Ambassador donor and also gave me a minty 1949 LA Ambassador Cornet and a rough silver Yamaha YSL-352 trombone (used by young scholars as a percussion instrument..) as a thank you. He is a good friend and I would have happily done it for nothing.

So I will start them both in parallel this week.. will report back in on them in a few.