Description of my Schilke transformation from a B4 silver to a B6 Gold ......................................................................................................................................................................................
Original notes on first fix up of Schilke This is the Schilke B4 that became a beautiful gold B6 ..........................................................................................................................................................
My sympathy to those who still must play every day for money. It may be great music – but I, have the best non-paying gig ever. I play test 10,000 ways to make my horn “play itself.”
After finding a nice Warburton backbore I moved on to the trumpet. Here is the sequence I went through to bring the horn up to and beyond my expectations.
1. Getting the horn to sing and scream is the holy grail. I knew the receiver was letting my chops chase the air in the upper register. So I used my fingers to find the exact spot where the vibration was “speaking” from. It was two thirds up the receiver across the bell brace. 2. I placed a piece of bent copper electrical wire around the receiver over the vibration and that kept my chops together but took a little life out of the sound. 3. I then used a brass threaded hose connector over the spot and the life was back but now the lower partials were also excited and the sound was live but too symphonic for my ear. I had the sound in my mind and at every step I recorded the sound then compared both sound and consistency of the waveforms in protools. 4. I then moved to the mouthpiece backbore and placed several different washers of different metals and weights and in several locations up and down the backbore. This sounded nice and big but once again forced my chops open too far. 5. Next I cut several sleeves of brass from a brass sheet and used them up and down the lead pipe, tuning slide, and behind the first valve on the bell tubing. I found some beautiful spots on the tuning slide that made the horn sing so sweetly – but the upper register backed up and choked me. 6. Next I went to the valve caps, finally settling on the vintage Martin gold caps with the familiar saucer shape for valves 2 and 3. On the first I used a Curry C Cap with one brass washer. This was a nice feel but backed up the first valve on me. So I placed a 2nd washer inside – way too bright and thin. Then I tried the o ring with the same combinations. It felt right on all of them but I knew I needed to have some air space under the first washer that rendered the proper resistance but not the tinny sound. I finally settled on an adjustable snap ring that was very thin and could be stretched to fit. Voici – here it was! 7. Now the horn played well, sounded great, screamed and sang, but…. The notes were not as secure as I know a Schilke should be. 8. I knew projection and stability come from the 3rd valve cap area – but I didn’t want to change the cap. So I placed a ½ inch wide brass sleeve around the top slide on the 3rd valve, pushing it right up to the third valve casing, and leaving it hang about 1/8 inch into the slide area. This caused the slide to stop against it and solved a slight intonation problem – probably more a stability situation than actual pitch. This fix on the third valve slide created the same thing as reversing the third valve slide – top to bottom; which is an expensive fix done by some shops to clear up the mush sometimes felt in that area.
The final result is a modified horn that plays better than the sum of its’ parts. See pix. I am also working on an audio clip displaying the results as I moved through the 2-week process.
Original notes on first fix up of Schilke