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When I'm not allowed to play tuba I enjoy messing around with old instruments and I was wondering what some of the dos and donts of instrument making you guys have learned over the years. Just some general things like doing this will make for bad intonation or anything along those lines.

And also, the affects that certain things have on sound like a gradual bell flare has a brighter sound etc.....

There are few generalities, because there are so many overlapping and contradictory tendencies that any one rule might cause opposite effects in different situations. You must either experiment a lot, or study a lot, or both. The details are important.

But on the more general topic of project horns, I do offer these aphorisms:

1.) Never use your favorite current ax as a project horn. This is akin to the old hot-rodding adage: Never race your ride.

2.) Never use an expensive instrument as solder practice. When I wanted to do a project, I bought some cheap thing off ebay and worked on that.

3.) Each change you make should put you in a better position than you were in before making the change. That means, don't screw up what works to achieve something that might not work.

4.) If you want to play, play. Having fun is the only measure of success. But if you want to learn to do it professionally, then apply exacting standards of perfection to everything you do. Experience will help you work faster, but the standards should always be high.

5.) Do not break the rules before learning them.

Rick "respectfully submitted" Denney