Resilience Oils valve oil review
Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 2:31 pm
Hi all. I posted this review over on Dave Werden's forum and thought I would share it here as well. I see there was some talk about these products last year in a different thread here, but I went a little more in depth than most of the reviewers there did.
After having tried pretty much everything, I've settled on a synthetic valve oil from Yamaha for the past several years that worked well enough for me. I could get it easily from my local music store or Amazon, and it seemed to minimize but not necessarily eliminate the sludgy deposits I ended up with in the bottom valve caps and valve ports with some other synthetic oils. It didn't have a strong smell. But it still wasn't perfect. Storing instruments for a while (which I often do, owning dozens of brass instruments) I'd sometimes take out instruments I hadn't used in a while and find the valves frozen, even though I had carefully wiped and re-oiled the valves when I put them away. And my body chemistry seemed to promote the buildup of mineral deposits on the pistons that I understand would cause oil to dry up and cause sticking. I'd often pull a valve out of a casing to find no film of oil on the valve, but lots of little droplets of water there instead. I found myself always leaving a bottle of valve oil on my stand during rehearsals, because I'd need to re-oil at least the first two valves up to a couple of times during a multi-hour rehearsal.
A few weeks ago, Jonathan Hodgetts of Wessex Tubas posted on the dwerden.com forum that Wessex uses and recommends Resilience Oils for their instruments. I have a favorable impression of Jonathan and his team, so my interest was piqued. I hadn't heard of this brand before, so I headed over to their web site. The copy on their web site was intriguing, but a glowing video review from Chris Olka (tubist in the Cincinnati Symphony and all-around super cool guy) sold it for me - I did some searching online and the easiest way to order a bottle was on eBay from Austin Custom Brass who has them listed with buy-it-now. What ACB sent me (lightning quick!) was the original formula of Resilience Oils, just labeled "Professional F-1 Valve Oil." This turns out to be the medium weight (or #2) offering from Resilience. Resilience has also come out with a lighter formula, which is labeled "Valve Oil #1 LIGHT." I suspect Resilience intended to have just one grade of valve oil, but found that their original formulation was a little too thick for some instruments and decided to expand the product range, in the meantime working through their supply of original bottles without this labeling distinction. In the past, I had tried light/regular/vintage formulations from Yamaha as well as light/regular/classic formulations from Hetman and had always found that the regular weight oil worked best for me. Light always seemed to offer no speed advantage on my collection of instruments but evaporate faster from my valves. This was, unfortunately for me, not the case with the Resilience Oil #2. I tried this on my approximately 1-year-old Adams E3 euphonium, my 2.5 year-old Yamaha Neo YBH-831S baritone, and a Mount Vernon Vincent Bach bass trumpet from 1959, which I assume had a valve replate job when it was restored at some point before I got it. On all three of these instruments, the valve action was just a little too sluggish for my tastes with the #2 oil. These are all fairly new (or renewed) valves on pro-quality instruments, and I prefer a light valve spring, so your mileage may vary. But I'd say that the #2 formulation would be best for older instruments that have gotten a lot of use and/or student-quality instruments with looser tolerances and that #1 should be the go-to formula for most everyone else.
While the #2 oil was just a little bit slow on my valves, it wasn't so bad that I couldn't play it, and I did recognize that something pretty special was happening. I made it through a whole brass band rehearsal with my Yamaha baritone without having to re-apply oil. This instrument is probably due for a chemical cleaning at my tech, and even though I've recently cleaned it at home, I think it's getting a build-up of those aforementioned mineral deposits which cause the oil to dry out very quickly. That just wasn't happening! I wondered how long it could go and practiced that instrument every day for a week without re-applying oil. I've heard tales of people who can do that - apply valve oil once a week - but it's never been my experience. I keep my instruments clean, brush my teeth before I play, but I've never been able to go multiple days without oiling valves. Yet here I was a week later, having played the instrument every day, and it still had a very visible film of oil coating each piston. I was also impressed with the generous and sturdy 2oz. bottle which had a very good dropper on it which was capable of metering out just a tiny bit of oil on each piston. I’ve had some valve oil in the past that I just could not dispense without making a huge mess, and this was not the case with the Resilience Oil.
After exchanging a few emails with Matt Simianer, Resilience Oils proprietor, I ordered some of the number #1 light valve oil. The light valve oil isn’t quite odorless, it has a little bit of a petrochemical smell, and does leave a little bit of an oily spot if you should happen to spill a drop on your clothes or couch, which wasn’t the case with the #2. On the instrument, I can sometimes detect a tiny bit of the scent, especially if I happen to inhale through the instrument, but it's nowhere near as bad as some conventional valve oils which have a much stronger scent. But it did provide a nice quick valve action on all my instruments without sacrificing any of the longevity or smooth feel. Even though it’s thinner, the protective and lubricating film was still there after multiple days of playing. This is extremely impressive! I’ve been playing on the #1 oil for about a week and the #2 for about a week before that and haven’t noticed any gummy deposits yet, just a little bit of cloudy water in the bottom piston caps. I’d want another month or so of data before I declare them completely deposit-free, but it’s looking positive.
Resilience Oils’ web site goes into a lot of detail about what makes their oil different. I’m not an expert in chemistry and in fact hardly remember any of my high school chemistry class, but I talked to a few friends and read a few web pages, so I’ll attempt to convey my understanding about this. The base stock for Resilience Oil is something called a Poly Alpha Olefin, or PAO. There is a lot of info on the web about this being used for synthetic automobile engine oil and in industrial applications, but not much else. Apparently a PAO is made by chaining multiple olefin molecules made of carbon and hydrogen atoms into a polymer, with a more complex hydrocarbon at the alpha or first position. This chain or lattice of olefins can be provided at designer lengths – you can order them with 4 olefins, or 10, or 20, or 40, and so on. This provides a consistent molecule size. In conventional oils, there are molecules of different sizes. The smaller molecules evaporate first which changes the behavior of the oil. This is very similar to some of the marketing literature that Yamaha provides with their synthetic valve oil, but it’s not clear whether Yamaha also uses PAOs or some other synthetic base.
The other advantage of PAOs is consistent performance across a huge range of temperatures. I don’t expect my brass instruments to ever be anywhere close to the 250 degrees F that you might find in a car engine, but PAOs seem like they hold up far beyond that. It’s nice to know that playing in the sun or leaving my instrument in the car on a frozen night won’t affect the oil performance.
Resilience’s web site talks about the ability for PAOs to absorb and neutralize the acids and other organic contaminants that enter an instrument through the player’s breath and saliva. While I couldn’t find any information on the web to corroborate this, my limited experience thus far strongly suggests that it works and isn’t just marketing fluff.
I've heard two competing theories for the sludge you get in your valves with Hetman and some other synthetic oils. Resilience's web site says it's because mineral-oil based oils absorb water and this creates an emulsion. Like a valve mayonnaise. Ewwww! The other theory I've heard is that bacteria like to feed on the molecules found in some synthetic oils and this creates a biofilm of bacteria and their waste products. I don't know which is true but they both sound plausible to me and maybe some of both is happening? Like I said, I think it's still too early to tell if this happens with Resilience or not for me, but I think that the longevity and protection for the instrument is pretty great, so I'm enthusiastic either way.
It’s worth noting that while most synthetic oils are made in a lab, their ultimate origins are natural. PAOs seem to be generally made from ethylene gas which comes from… <wait for it>… refining petroleum. Resilience points out that this process results in a purer product, giving us the oil molecules but without many of the contaminants including traces of heavy metals found in conventional oils.
<continued>
After having tried pretty much everything, I've settled on a synthetic valve oil from Yamaha for the past several years that worked well enough for me. I could get it easily from my local music store or Amazon, and it seemed to minimize but not necessarily eliminate the sludgy deposits I ended up with in the bottom valve caps and valve ports with some other synthetic oils. It didn't have a strong smell. But it still wasn't perfect. Storing instruments for a while (which I often do, owning dozens of brass instruments) I'd sometimes take out instruments I hadn't used in a while and find the valves frozen, even though I had carefully wiped and re-oiled the valves when I put them away. And my body chemistry seemed to promote the buildup of mineral deposits on the pistons that I understand would cause oil to dry up and cause sticking. I'd often pull a valve out of a casing to find no film of oil on the valve, but lots of little droplets of water there instead. I found myself always leaving a bottle of valve oil on my stand during rehearsals, because I'd need to re-oil at least the first two valves up to a couple of times during a multi-hour rehearsal.
A few weeks ago, Jonathan Hodgetts of Wessex Tubas posted on the dwerden.com forum that Wessex uses and recommends Resilience Oils for their instruments. I have a favorable impression of Jonathan and his team, so my interest was piqued. I hadn't heard of this brand before, so I headed over to their web site. The copy on their web site was intriguing, but a glowing video review from Chris Olka (tubist in the Cincinnati Symphony and all-around super cool guy) sold it for me - I did some searching online and the easiest way to order a bottle was on eBay from Austin Custom Brass who has them listed with buy-it-now. What ACB sent me (lightning quick!) was the original formula of Resilience Oils, just labeled "Professional F-1 Valve Oil." This turns out to be the medium weight (or #2) offering from Resilience. Resilience has also come out with a lighter formula, which is labeled "Valve Oil #1 LIGHT." I suspect Resilience intended to have just one grade of valve oil, but found that their original formulation was a little too thick for some instruments and decided to expand the product range, in the meantime working through their supply of original bottles without this labeling distinction. In the past, I had tried light/regular/vintage formulations from Yamaha as well as light/regular/classic formulations from Hetman and had always found that the regular weight oil worked best for me. Light always seemed to offer no speed advantage on my collection of instruments but evaporate faster from my valves. This was, unfortunately for me, not the case with the Resilience Oil #2. I tried this on my approximately 1-year-old Adams E3 euphonium, my 2.5 year-old Yamaha Neo YBH-831S baritone, and a Mount Vernon Vincent Bach bass trumpet from 1959, which I assume had a valve replate job when it was restored at some point before I got it. On all three of these instruments, the valve action was just a little too sluggish for my tastes with the #2 oil. These are all fairly new (or renewed) valves on pro-quality instruments, and I prefer a light valve spring, so your mileage may vary. But I'd say that the #2 formulation would be best for older instruments that have gotten a lot of use and/or student-quality instruments with looser tolerances and that #1 should be the go-to formula for most everyone else.
While the #2 oil was just a little bit slow on my valves, it wasn't so bad that I couldn't play it, and I did recognize that something pretty special was happening. I made it through a whole brass band rehearsal with my Yamaha baritone without having to re-apply oil. This instrument is probably due for a chemical cleaning at my tech, and even though I've recently cleaned it at home, I think it's getting a build-up of those aforementioned mineral deposits which cause the oil to dry out very quickly. That just wasn't happening! I wondered how long it could go and practiced that instrument every day for a week without re-applying oil. I've heard tales of people who can do that - apply valve oil once a week - but it's never been my experience. I keep my instruments clean, brush my teeth before I play, but I've never been able to go multiple days without oiling valves. Yet here I was a week later, having played the instrument every day, and it still had a very visible film of oil coating each piston. I was also impressed with the generous and sturdy 2oz. bottle which had a very good dropper on it which was capable of metering out just a tiny bit of oil on each piston. I’ve had some valve oil in the past that I just could not dispense without making a huge mess, and this was not the case with the Resilience Oil.
After exchanging a few emails with Matt Simianer, Resilience Oils proprietor, I ordered some of the number #1 light valve oil. The light valve oil isn’t quite odorless, it has a little bit of a petrochemical smell, and does leave a little bit of an oily spot if you should happen to spill a drop on your clothes or couch, which wasn’t the case with the #2. On the instrument, I can sometimes detect a tiny bit of the scent, especially if I happen to inhale through the instrument, but it's nowhere near as bad as some conventional valve oils which have a much stronger scent. But it did provide a nice quick valve action on all my instruments without sacrificing any of the longevity or smooth feel. Even though it’s thinner, the protective and lubricating film was still there after multiple days of playing. This is extremely impressive! I’ve been playing on the #1 oil for about a week and the #2 for about a week before that and haven’t noticed any gummy deposits yet, just a little bit of cloudy water in the bottom piston caps. I’d want another month or so of data before I declare them completely deposit-free, but it’s looking positive.
Resilience Oils’ web site goes into a lot of detail about what makes their oil different. I’m not an expert in chemistry and in fact hardly remember any of my high school chemistry class, but I talked to a few friends and read a few web pages, so I’ll attempt to convey my understanding about this. The base stock for Resilience Oil is something called a Poly Alpha Olefin, or PAO. There is a lot of info on the web about this being used for synthetic automobile engine oil and in industrial applications, but not much else. Apparently a PAO is made by chaining multiple olefin molecules made of carbon and hydrogen atoms into a polymer, with a more complex hydrocarbon at the alpha or first position. This chain or lattice of olefins can be provided at designer lengths – you can order them with 4 olefins, or 10, or 20, or 40, and so on. This provides a consistent molecule size. In conventional oils, there are molecules of different sizes. The smaller molecules evaporate first which changes the behavior of the oil. This is very similar to some of the marketing literature that Yamaha provides with their synthetic valve oil, but it’s not clear whether Yamaha also uses PAOs or some other synthetic base.
The other advantage of PAOs is consistent performance across a huge range of temperatures. I don’t expect my brass instruments to ever be anywhere close to the 250 degrees F that you might find in a car engine, but PAOs seem like they hold up far beyond that. It’s nice to know that playing in the sun or leaving my instrument in the car on a frozen night won’t affect the oil performance.
Resilience’s web site talks about the ability for PAOs to absorb and neutralize the acids and other organic contaminants that enter an instrument through the player’s breath and saliva. While I couldn’t find any information on the web to corroborate this, my limited experience thus far strongly suggests that it works and isn’t just marketing fluff.
I've heard two competing theories for the sludge you get in your valves with Hetman and some other synthetic oils. Resilience's web site says it's because mineral-oil based oils absorb water and this creates an emulsion. Like a valve mayonnaise. Ewwww! The other theory I've heard is that bacteria like to feed on the molecules found in some synthetic oils and this creates a biofilm of bacteria and their waste products. I don't know which is true but they both sound plausible to me and maybe some of both is happening? Like I said, I think it's still too early to tell if this happens with Resilience or not for me, but I think that the longevity and protection for the instrument is pretty great, so I'm enthusiastic either way.
It’s worth noting that while most synthetic oils are made in a lab, their ultimate origins are natural. PAOs seem to be generally made from ethylene gas which comes from… <wait for it>… refining petroleum. Resilience points out that this process results in a purer product, giving us the oil molecules but without many of the contaminants including traces of heavy metals found in conventional oils.
<continued>