About a year ago, I switched from trombone/euphonium to valved as well as natural trumpet in an attempt to keep playing while minimizing impacts on my hearing (hyperacusis + tinnitus) and currently manageable carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand/wrist. I only play alone with a practice mute (not as sad as it sounds), currently a Wallace Studio mute for trumpet. I'm a recreational musician and play just for fun. Valved trumpeting has been going pretty well, but I know that operating valves aggravates my cts, even with proper arched finger technique and I’d like to avoid invasive treatment. I’d be willing to give up right-hand involved music to avoid surgery. Tenor trombone playing had also become tough on my left hand with a practice mute, even with a Neotech brace.
I’m also a big Steven Bernstein/Sex Mob fan and have wanted a decent quality soprano trombone for many years. I haven’t been terribly impressed with reports about horns from Jupiter or the available clones, possibly from Jin Bao or other manufacturers. I was also waiting for a soprano with a proper screw down attachment between the bell and slide sections as well as a bell tuning slide, or possibly tuning in the hand slide.
So…
I recently became aware that a Carol Brass ‘slide trumpet’ (a.k.a. soprano trombone) had become available at Rich Ita’s Brass Instrument Workshop:
https://www.brassinstrumentworkshop.com ... de-trumpet
(check out for pics; Rich is great to deal with)
for $375 + $25 shipping.
This trombone has a screw down bell-handslide connection as well as tuning in the leadpipe. I wasn’t sure that the leadipe would be long enough to accommodate tuning with a practice mute, but took a chance.
It’s great!
Although the horn is a bit front-heavy with the Wallace mute, it’s very light and I find it easy to hold. The leadpipe tuning is wonderful! The pipe is 2-3x longer than needed to keep the horn in tune and I make any further adjustments by ear/hand slide as with any trombone. Slide action is as good as for any trombone I’ve played.
Fit is excellent and I find only one very minor blemish in the lacquer. I also need to rotate (loosen) the slide lock revolution to properly engage the catch on the outer slide. This doesn’t interfere with the slide at all. Interestingly, only the bell side (as opposed to the leadpipe side) of the handslide makes contact with the bumper as it is a bit longer. This doesn’t seem to be an issue, but I thought it worth mentioning.
I was concerned about the potential difficulty learning treble clef slide positions, which took all of 10 minutes. I gave away all of my bass clef music a while back and now have a sizeable stash of music for Bb trumpet, so that was a relief.
I played unmuted for a few minutes and I like the sound. It sounds a bit more trombonish than trumpety, but that could also be my imagination.
It’s a very nice horn, irrespective of the very reasonable price, and I expect it to be my daily player for the forseeable future.
I’d also take a chance on other Carol Brass horns and indeed have my eye on a left-handed, valved trumpet as a possible future purchase... but not until lockdown is over.
Cheers,
multiphonic
