TromboneChat

My alto wouldn't disassemble today.

The screw unscrewed, but when I tried to pull the slide off, the lower inner tube stayed attached while the rest of it moved. It's not my primary horn so it sits on a stand, rarely disassembled. Apparently a mistake.

I can see about a 1/16 inch gap between the receiver and the tenon. The tenon assembly has a roughly 5/16 inch shoulder and then a 1/4 " solder joint into the slide brace. That solder joint came apart. The inner tube remains firmly attached to the bell.

It's a cheap Selman, worth considerably less than its mouthpiece. So............

any advice? It's common to see posts about slides that won't stay tight, this is the opposite.

(I edited this, I had brain cramp typing the first time and used the term leadpipe which obviously it is not.)

This happened to my Minick Holton 180. Gotta have a tech work on it.

The most important thing to remember is “vibration loosens things.” For your situation, gentle taps with a small rawhide, canvas or delrin hammer on the tenon should eventually loosen the connection. As a rule, you want to tap on the thickest area of metal as to not change the shape of any metal parts.

Most techs in my circles use gentle tapping first, as long as there is something thick enough in the tenon area to handle it. The “wedge” tools that are intended for this problem are rarely used.

I have owned a couple sets of those wedges since the 1990s. I think I have only used them 5 or 6 times. Why? 97% of the time that this problem has occurred, the gentle tapping has solved it.

Crazy4Tbone86 wrote: Sat Nov 29, 2025 7:32 am The most important thing to remember is “vibration loosens things.” For your situation, gentle taps with a small rawhide, canvas or delrin hammer on the tenon should eventually loosen the connection. As a rule, you want to tap on the thickest area of metal as to not change the shape of any metal parts.

Good advice, but a little late.

I loosened the screw and twisted the connection a bit. I applied some force but not an extreme amount, more than usual but not more than a tenor trombone sometimes needs to remove the slide from the bell.

And instead of the slide section coming away from the bell, the lower slide inner came away from the hand brace section. The solder joint that holds the brace onto the tenon failed.

So if I'd predicted that might happen, I could have used light tapping to free the slide tenon instead of the twist. That would be a bit unusual though, unless I knew it was stuck.

I'm not visualizing how a wedge would have worked, but I did get the connection apart. I'm left with a failed solder joint, so when reassembled the slide connection stays at 90 degrees but the slide will still flop.

I suspect a tech would want more than $100 to resolder, on a horn that's not worth $100.

Cleaning up the joint is going to be tricky. The inner slide is loose, but the brace won't slide past the stocking, so cleaning the inside of the solder joint will be impossible without further unsoldering, I think.

It's still playable as long as I don't have to put it in the case. JBweld anybody?

Don't use JB Weld. Have it repaired properly

timothy42b wrote: Sat Nov 29, 2025 9:09 am
I suspect a tech would want more than $100 to resolder, on a horn that's not worth $100.

Cleaning up the joint is going to be tricky. The inner slide is loose, but the brace won't slide past the stocking, so cleaning the inside of the solder joint will be impossible without further unsoldering, I think.

It's still playable as long as I don't have to put it in the case. JBweld anybody?

Is the male tenon a separate piece? If so, you just heat it and pull it off of the slide tube, then pull the slide tube out of the brace assembly. Then you can clean up the parts and re- solder. Probably less than $100. Can you post a picture of what you have? Should be a pretty simple repair for anyone who knows how to solder.

Will do. Photo tomorrow.

Tim,
Yeah.... $100 horn... cost of repair...
BUT
If you just get another at the original price
this same thing could happen again.
Pretty sure a good tech will get that resoldered such that it does NOT break loose again.
That SHOULD have been a very strong joint.
Looks to me like the original solder penetration was not adequate.
A decent tech will do better.

Maybe think of it as that for the price of a new one you get a more reliable version of the one you have?

I'd avoid much playing in this condition. That slide is no longer well supported. Going to be hard on the plating!

In all likelihood your tech will check the inners/outers on a flat stone before and after soldering.
More than likely slide action will be better than every.
I HATE poor slide action on altos.
Those shorter positions make ANY stickiness a music-defying feature.

Dave

Sorry Tim
(I sold him that horn)

That was summer of 2020.

It played okay for five years, can't complain. And like Dave points out, it might be even better if fixed correctly.

It was way better than the pBone Mini version of the alto, which weirdly now suffers exactly the same problem: I can't take it apart.

Over time both parts of the connection between bell and slide degraded and cracked. I think there might have been a third piece that fell out. Eventually I solved the problem by permanently fixing the connection with JBWeld. If the slide wasn't so sticky I'd probably still play it occasionally.

You don't know your own strength Tim!

"Hulk rip alto!"

Joking aside, the repair probably won't be too bad and at least it's not some Thein or something.

Yeah, easy fix. The only reason you need to unsolder that tenon is so you can pull the slide tube out of the cork barrel assembly and clean inside of it. Otherwise the solder probably won't stick. I would do it for $50, but I don't know what other people would charge. It's good to resolder the tube with the outer slide on so the alignment is automatically taken care of, or at least will need minimal adjustment afterwards.

Update:
I took it to the local music store. They resoldered it, and the notes said they also changed the cork and the felts and cleaned the slide. The charge was about $60, which seems very reasonable to me.

It seems to be considerably sharper after the repair. It was always a bit on the sharp side, now the tuning slide has to be pulled right to the edge, and still played out a bit. This isn't something that I perform on; it's for fun and the mental challenge of a different tuning. (and when joints need a rest from a heavier horn) So I'm not complaining but it is curious.

Your horn is now probably worth more than when it was new, you did a good investment.