I understand when you like your present horn quite a bit the temptation is strong to want to try to fix the little nagging problems it might have. My main thought was that it doesn't hurt to keep kissing frogs just in case a beautiful princess might turn up. It happened for me at one of the IHS workshops. She's still a honey! Well of course there are the people who have a new horn every six months too. Annoying if you're trying to play 2nd horn to them! Don't forget, a leadpipe may be cheaper than a valve job, but you won't be able to tell if it's the right one unless the rest if the horn is shipshape (valve job first). Of course maybe it doesn't leak, in that case you're cool, but check out the valves and slides first. Also don't forget, it's not just the mouthpiece cup, it's how the taper of the shank fits the leadpipe. That changes, of course, if you put a different leadpipe on. If the shank fits the leadpipe to the correct depth for that leadpipe, you will experience a much easier time playing everything. The difference can be dramatic. Awhile ago I had a customer who had bought an expensive custom leadpipe and wanted me to put it on his horn. He said he had no high Bb. I tried the horn with his mouthpiece and sure enough, it had a totally stinky high Bb. He had a German horn with the metric taper to the receiver. I tried it using a mouthpiece that had the correct shank taper, and the high Bb was strong clear and beautiful. Well, he had an important gig the next day and didn't have time to search for a new mouthpiece so he got a rather expensive solution to an inexpensive problem. - Steve Mumford
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX William wrote: 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 _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
