And here's what I'm dying to write back, and post on the site for all to see, but I'm afraid I'll come off as a smart a$$ (who, me?) and scare off any other possible bidders:As to the patine statement, yeah it protects the brass, untill someomes acidic hads start pitting it, ot it give someone brass poisoning. Why do you think most companies wont sell raw brass horns?
Thanks
Conner
What's a guy to do?Hi, thanks for your interest in my auction. You are right about the possibility of pitting when sweaty hands come in contact with bare brass. However, I know of many professional musicians who have actually paid a lot of money to have the lacquer removed from their instruments, preferring raw brass, and claiming that it sounds better, or looks better, or even feels better. As far as "Brass Poisoning" I have never been able to discover a scientifically or medically substantiated case of actual poisoning from a musical instrument, although some people may have an allergic reaction to bare brass (which is an alloy) or one of the metals of which various types of brass are composed. Free-machining brass in particular contains a small amount of lead, to make the milling and lathing process easier, although if you were to perform calculations on the time it takes the lead to diffuse, you would have difficulty detecting anything in less than a geological time period. (And brass instruments, if I understand corectly, are made of sheet brass, not cut from a "blank" on a lathe or mill.) Playing a bare brass horn for a few hours at a time may cause the hyper-sensitive to develop a rash at contact points, or at the very least a greenish tint to hands and clothing and a funky smell, but I would not be concerned with serious health problems unles you somehow manage to ingest a significant portion of this instrument.
I'll probably just write back and agree with him, and tell him that I prefer lacquered instruments, and not post it on the site. Oh well...
MF
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