Stuff found in horns

[Donn]

Not mine, but a friend had a herald trumpet that she'd been playing in public (not in a context where you'd expect herald trumpets at all, but that's another story), and needed something fixed. The repairman found a cleaning brush within.

[Gongadin]

I once bought a Conn 40K out of the local Classifieds. It had been hanging in a shed for years. I sent it down to Harvey and he contacted me to let me know that the horn played 100% better after he flushed the dead bird out.

[tylerferris1213]

I once bought a little Weril euphonium for parts. I couldn't get over how stuffy it played, even with its condition taken into consideration. I ended up finding not one, but two mascara brushes in the leadpipe by the valve cluster.

[Arthur]

An old Conn 14K in the back of my college band room (a converted ROTC rifle range) had about 5 pounds of expended .308 brass.

[Michael Bush]

Every few months I snake my horns out in a bathtub with Dawn. Today I rinsed a brown recluse spider out of my main, everyday tuba. I don't know where in the horn it was, it was just laying (legs curled up, dead) in the bottom of the tub when I finished. A little alarming.

[largobone]

My friend threw a hand-warmer into the bell of my marching baritone at a competition last year Took 5 band moms and a lot of spare bobby pins threaded together to fish that thing out with about a minute before we took the field.