Back some years ago there was a long running series on Horn Matters by Dave Weiner, the “Ask Dave” series that you can look at in full here. Many highly interesting articles!
One of my favorite titles of all the articles in the series was this one:
As he notes there, the occult in this case refers to hidden issues with your horn. He has something specific in that article, but there are many more possible hidden issues.
Pencils?
So, with the end of the semester and the hot Arizona summer coming soon, I’ve been working on horn projects in my garage shop. I have not been posting about those projects here, I have been posting about those in my personal site blog (which you can access here if you are interested).
Working today on prepping the first branch on a project, the dent ball would not go in! And then I saw something inside.
In the photo, it’s just barely visible, but I could see right away it was the remnants of a pencil eraser. This pencil:
If memory serves, this is only the second pencil I’ve found in a horn and the first one bent like this! I suppose it could have worked down into the horn naturally, was just loose in the case at some point, and bent in the moist environment. But I have to wonder if somebody “helped it” a bit as well.
The other pencil I remember finding, it was years ago (in Nashville) inside a Holton horn I was cleaning for the student of a colleague. I remember the horn was clearly less stuffy after the cleaning!
I’ve also found a costume jewelry ring in a horn at essentially the same location.
What’s the project?
This horn is actually a vintage Mirafone Kruspe model. My goal with this is to rebuild it to match my postwar Kruspe as closely as practical. I have a “medium” bell off a Mirafone single that is all set to use, which matches the size of my Kruspe. Maybe I can get this horn done before the summer heat shuts down the shop, or maybe I finish it in October. Whenever I get it done, for sure the horn will play better than it did!
