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Awesome! I love project horns! Looks great!

Not the OP, but I believe Norm told me the last time I was in his shop that the rotor is Chinese/Jin Bao.

arpthark wrote:Not the OP, but I believe Norm told me the last time I was in his shop that the rotor is Chinese/Jin Bao.

If I was a betting man, I would bet a nickel that it's left from when he put a 5th on my 2J a couple of years ago. I gave him some parts, including the valve section, off a horn I bought from Tom McGrady, and my project only required one. If so it's from a Mack Brass 200 BBb that was destroyed in shipping. Bloke has some parts from that instrument as well. Some of the smaller tubing is now part of my B&S/Ziess.

Any update on how this is working for you? I sent you a PM with some questions, but it's still sitting in my "outbox" if you get a chance to reply, I'd appreciate it. I'm planning on doing a similar project in the future (hopefully this summer!).

Thanks!

It's been a while since I updated on this one, so I thought I'd check in with how it's going. I spent about a year with the horn as Norm built it, and while it played very well, I found that I had some difficulty getting pitch to center when playing with 4th valve. The 1st valve was very sticky as well. Norm suspected that I would need a valve job to fix the issue.

Valve jobs are pricey, so I took it to my local tech to have him look it over to see what he could do. Rob Phillips is another true pro, so I was not worried at all to have him look it over. A quick look around the horn revealed a lot of leaks in the 4th valve circuit that Rob suspected were contributing to the difficulty with centering pitch and the general stuffy feeling while playing. I had also found the positioning of the top 4th valve slide made the horn very uncomfortable to hold while playing.

Because of those issues (and partly because I just can't help myself), I asked Rob to completely disassemble the 4th valve circuit and reroute it. In doing so, he was able to correct all of the leaks and make the horn much more comfortable to hold.

Here's the horn as it is right now:



Now that Rob has worked his magic on the horn, all of the stuffiness while playing with 4th valve is gone. Pitch is very easy to center as well. After about 2 months living with the horn as my everyday player, I can say that this thing is truly a work of art! I still have plans to tweak the horn in the future, and eventually have the finish of the horn cleaned up, but all in all, I am very happy with the results.

I like the new route on 4
Looks like an Eb again!
Do the privilege tones still work?

That's a fun wrap!