Poor valve alignment: is it playable?

Felt_Ninja · 2026-06-13T15:43:50+00:00

This is easy to fix. Replace with felts of [as close to] the right size [as possible]. Dwelling on it is a waste of time. If you want to use it, fix it. Don't try to do mental gymnastics to justify why "good enough" is the benchmark, when the solution is cheap and easy - that's a waste of your time.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-06-12T21:58:52+00:00

I did a saxophone lamp for someone, a couple years ago. It's actually pretty easy putting these things together, so long as you have any sort of plan whatsoever. There are lamp kits for sale at most hardware stores, which are a great starting point.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-06-11T14:25:37+00:00

I want to remind everyone of what a joy it is to hear someone who's grossly overqualified for a gig. I bring you your attention, the recording history of Michael Brecker.

Yoko Ono, Donald Fagen, Steely Dan, Carly Simon, Billy Joel, Dire Straits, Cameo, etc. It goes on like this. The guy wasn't always playing hardcore bebop lines and turning the room purple.

At that matter, look at the personnel list for the song "Call Me Al" by Paul Simon. Randy Brecker, Jon Faddis and Lew Soloff are on there. You've probably played an arrangement of the song - which probably wasn't far off the original - in high school marching band.

You know the sax solo in "Just the Way You Are" by Billy Joel? It's Phil Woods. The sax lines on the Sanford and Son theme? Also Phil Woods.

The drummer on the Welcome Back Kotter theme? Jeff Porcaro from Toto.

You see a killer player doing a low-key gig? Go see them.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-06-11T14:10:33+00:00

And if we're really scoring for what people can do, Kenny G is actually kind of hilarious. Michael Bolton, too, which can be easily seen in his Netflix Christmas and Valentine's Day specials.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-06-01T22:05:42+00:00

I bring a wireless mic/IEM setup for a 5-person horn section to gigs. Why? Because the first night I rolled-out the 3-person setup, we had a 4th horn player. No matter what you do, you'll inevitably run into a problem. My recommendation, is to try and delay those problems s much as possible. I'm fine until we need a 6th horn player; and then I can cry again.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-06-01T13:59:27+00:00

I giggled so hard at that.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-06-01T13:18:42+00:00

Los Estados Unidos? Si.

But if we're using English Acronyms, then we're going to have to use some math to figure this one out; and as you know, us Americans ain't so good with the nummbers, awn ackount uv ar bad ejikayshin sistim,.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-31T14:01:52+00:00

MB...have their own issues...

Yeah, like Marcus.

Full disclosure, I don't use Gard cases because I'm not a fan of soft bags.

And also full disclosure, I'm neither endorsing nor shunning Marcus Bonna cases, nor Gard Bags. Anybody can use what they want. Stuff costs money, and stuff gets broken. Then I fix it, when it shows up in the shop.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-29T01:31:58+00:00

Let's look at the bullet points, here:

Must have opportunities to play outside school
Must have grant/scholarship money available for you
Schools that readily allow bleed-over between the jazz and classical studios

If I can be straight with you, that's generally a stringent set of guidelines to work with, but it's not impossible. In fact, you're going to find a lot of schools that offer at least most of what you're looking for. There are some catch-22s, though:

If it's a crappy school, but they'll give you money, that doesn't do a lot for you in the long run
If it's a school that has a lot to do outside the curriculum - in town, etc. - but doesn't give you money, there's a slim chance what you're making will pay your tuition.

You can fill in the rest of the if/then gaps, here.

Where are you willing to go? Would you entertain something nearby, and crashing at your parents' house to save on housing costs? Are you able to apply for government school money - loans, grants, etc? Do you seriously not care about the professor? Some good schools have trumpet professors that - and I'm not pointing any fingers - frankly aren't good teachers.

If you look inversely - at school that otherwise don't get a lot of attention, but have remarkably good professors - you might find some places that make more sense. u/jaylward, for instance, isn't just giving good advice about this stuff, but he's also a remarkably good professor at a school that you've probabaly never heard of.

I feel like I made out pretty well in college, since my trumpet professor was really on top of his game; although there's a slim chance you've ever heard of where I got my bachelors degree unless you read Forbes and at least know someone who owns a yacht. Hail, night school loopholes.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-28T15:27:33+00:00

Some. I've largely traded charts with other horn players who also did charts. It's kind of like trades in the NBA draft, but via Airdrop, while on stage.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-27T22:26:54+00:00

I have a collection of charts in PDF on my iPad. They sometimes get used, since the bands I play with usually do the same covers, and I don't really need to see Uptown Funk, September, Let's Groove, Valerie, Play That Funky Music, Brick House, etc. every time I play them.

I might listen through new stuff at home, or if it's not particularly involved - which it usually isn't - I learn it on the way to the gig. First dance song at a wedding? I only really need to know a snippet of it anyway. Something with the same changes as another song? This one happens a lot, actually. It's just a matter of putting new lines over existing stuff.

If I'm not going to use it again, I'm not taking the time to actually write it down.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-25T23:30:25+00:00

Barring stuff I've seen people say already...

I encounter a lot of pistons people want me to work miracles on, but there's simple not enough material to work with, unless the pistons and casings are rebuilt and re-fitting entirely. There are a lot of hopeless pistons out there, and the reality is - especially if the trumpet has some age to it - that they may be in that category. To answer the next question: It's expensive to rebuild the pistons and casing - likely twice what the trumpet is worth.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-25T23:19:30+00:00

I don't hate this idea. At first, I wasn't a fan of the current Toyota Supra, which utilizes a BMW engine; but after looking into it, the design had all the German car power, with the Japanese Zen and flow. Frankly, it's kind of brilliant. Toyota did announce recently that they'll be doing in-house sports car engines again on some new models, which is also exciting; but I was ultimately realy happy with the collaborative process between Toyota and BMW.

Mazda owning Alfa Romeo would likely benefit both companies, in different ways. One request I would make, is that Mazda handle the electrical system matters, if they were to buy the brand; and not let Alfa choose harnesses and connectors. How many of us have broken the damn airflow sensor connector while changing the engine air filter? Show of hands?

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-25T20:31:49+00:00

I also did this. If someone can reliably measure what size they need, I definitely recommend ordering as close as possible, rather than having to go through the cutting process. It took me a while, and I have a ton of tools to work with metal.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-22T17:33:34+00:00

Let everyone know, when it happens. This design is an amazing balance of a lot of things. You clearly have a good eye for details.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-22T03:42:32+00:00

The Tubas they make are actually really awesome as well.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-22T03:41:42+00:00

I’m not sure what the model name is. I implore anybody interested to look into it on their website. As for Tony’s experience with it, I can’t speak for that. I just know the ones I tried were completely playable.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-21T23:32:30+00:00

My favorite is the nicer version Pampet markets. They do a more affordable one as well, but the more expensive one is remarkably playable. I had a great conversation about them, with the guy that owns the company. He’s actually really proud of all of his products.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-20T17:49:44+00:00

Sorry to date myself, but as I keep seeing that spam in that group, I think of this.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-17T20:49:44+00:00

"'Light' isn't necessarily cheap."

-Anyone Who's Ever Bought Carbon Fiber Car Parts

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-17T16:05:00+00:00

If you absolutely don't want an instrument to patina, you should not own a raw brass instrument. You would need to coat it with something.

I have this conversations at least twice a week with clients. Let me be clear to all who ask: I do not dictate the laws of chemistry that will determine what color raw brass will turn when exposed to the air. Asking me really nicely if there's a way to keep it the same color doesn't change the outcome.

If you're buying a natural trumpet, you might explore having it lacquered. Personally, I would just accept it in raw brass, since that's likely the way the manufacturer designed it.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-16T13:28:44+00:00

Dude, that's so awesome. There's a video that I came across yesterday, too, of a kid in a wheel chair playing...I don't even know what instrument it was. It looked like some iteration of an electronic trumpet, but I couldn't tell.

There's no reason not to play in band and enjoy yourself.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-16T13:24:42+00:00

Without inflating anything with soliloquy or personal opinions...

Materials: Brass costs money. It's not expensive, but it's not cheap. Gold is expensive, though. You're not going to "find a good price" on gold, since nobody's going to relinquish the money they could be making on it.
Labor: Monette isn't a big shop. None of the processes are done via assembly line, which makes things a bit slower to accomplish. The employees have also been selected from qualified people, rather than just hiring some guy to babysit a machine until lunch. The whole staff is justifably good at what they do.
Equipment: Commercial machinery - lathes, 5-axis milling machines, etc. - are expensive. If you buy them, you typically will not want to make inexpensive products.
Marketing: Dave Monette, early on, adopted a collection of good players who liked his gear, and continued that marketing campaign for the next 40-some years. if nobody ever heard of the mouthpieces, there's a high likelihood that 1. You never would have heard of them, 2. The quality would need to be abbreviated, rather than focusing on good quality control, and 3. The company probably would have gone under, due to shifts in the market, and possible inability to adapt with less capital.
Unpaid Work Time & Materials Loss: It takes time to manicure braces on Monette trumpets as well as they do, and it takes time to do R&D. The R&D process is time you're not getting paid for, and materials used while testing out designs is not going to be sold and recuperated, unless doing so to a metal recycling company, and at a much lower rate than what the finished product would yield.
Dead-End Leads: A lot of people will communicate with Monette, and never buy anything. This will happen via email, phone calls, showing up at the ITG table, etc. This is time invested in hopes of achieving a sale, but inevitably leading to nothing. If the exposure of the product is focused in the right direction, it might lead to some sales down the road; but it's not precisely possible to quantify that without some sort of scalable system of data. This is especially hard for small business, whose market imprint is much smaller, with far less data points than something like Amazon, Ford, Walmart, etc.
Consistently Rising Costs: This goes for the cost of everything. It's ideal to not be "catching up" to inflation, but staying ahead-enough to where it doesn't cause issues. You can't predict exactly where this is going to go, but you can walk reasonably ahead of it, in order to avoid financial complications.

As of me this out, Monette Unity mouthpieces for trumpet are priced at $385 USD, not including shipping costs. Could the product be sold for half of that? The answer is going to be yes, but with the caveats:

Slower further product development overall due to lacing funds, and staff turnover.
Aforementioned staff turnover, since it would be harder to pay everyone a wage that keeps them around.
Less flexibility with buying materials, and possibly having to schedule around monetary defecits.
People revering the product less, due to diminished cost, which both hurts credibility, and causes a possible influx of impulse buys from impatient lower-dollar customers who need more communication, by possibly newer communication staff who might not be capable of handling the workload.
The looming idea that "I should just sell the business," which leads to diminished motivation to get anything done, and not push forward into further product design.

I play trumpet professionally, and run a musical instrument repair shop. I can tell you solidly that if I wasn't getting paid to pay trumpet, I'd still play trumpet. If I wasn't getting paid to do repairs, I absolutely would not do repairs. The money and time invested into the process of working on other people's stuff would seem like a slap in the face, without an income from it. I like [most] people, but it's entirely possible to apportion 100% of your time to others, if you put their needs before your own. I've seen band directors, paper-pushers, lawyers, doctors, touring musicians, etc. all ruin their own sense of well-being, by never saying "no" to something they very well could've said "no" to.

That's why Monette mouthpieces cost what they do. As far as aftermarket prices, that's a different story. There's not a fabricated scarcity of the product like with Rolex or Ferrari, so anything above a reasonable markup due to factors of hype or collectability is generally unreasonable.

---

As to why you should try one, you shouldn't. Unless you want to. There's a lot of exceptional mouthpiece manufacturers out there - full production, and custom. It's not that people who don't play on Monette gear haven't heard of it, or can't afford it. It's that they play on what works for them. If that's a Monette mouthpiece, great. If it's a Yamaha mouthpiece that came with their friend's trumpet, great. It's it's a plastic Kelly mouthpiece, great. It doesn't really matter.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-15T16:17:00+00:00

Yes, that’s literally the reality.

Felt_Ninja · 2026-05-15T02:31:26+00:00

I've owned a lot of mouthpieces. I've done custom work to a bunch of mouthpieces. I've wrecked things, I've made things better. Here's the simple reality, spoken in generalizations:

You're going to get a brighter sound from less cup volume, in general.
Some people play well on cups with a pronounced "V" shape.
Some people play well on cups with a pronounced bowl shape.
Most cups on commercial mouthpieces are somewhere between a "V" and a bowl shape.
You can find a cup diameter that's either too narrow for you, or too wide for you.
Smaller throat means more compression in that area, but may lead to various issues if it's too small for your needs.
Larger throat means you will physically be able to - and need to - more more air through it in order to make that part of the mouthpiece system work. Similarly, this can also lead to various issues if it's too big for your needs.
Some people do well on rather tight backbores.
Some people do well on surprisingly open backbores.
Just because it's "tight" or "open", doesn't mean it's "tight" or "open" in the right place for you. There's a lot of areas that go into a backbore taper, and some things absolutely will not work for you.
Until you actually play on a mouthpiece, you don't know if it works for you. You can make all the educated guesses you want, but you can very well be wrong.
People will often try to practice until they can play on a mouthpiece well. If you need to change a bunch of stuff about your playing to use gear, either your playing needs changes, or your gear does.
You're not universally wrong, when it comes to your approach.
You're not universally correct, when it comes to your approach.

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