Brought home two more strays... with the wife's permission even!
Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2019 7:02 pm
Have a high school homecoming game in October in which alumni are invited to march in with the band, play in the stands, and at halftime come onto the field for one number. Our band is Ohio State high stepping horn swagger fast tempo style and the life expectancy for slides is short. My problem is that 1) I graduated in 1975 and am a bit out of shape for that kind of physical activity (the number we are doing requires slowly bending over almost double with the slide behind my ankle, holding that for 18 beats or so, then jumping up with the horn about 30 degrees above horizontal in half a second, and 2) my aresenal doesn't include a beater horn. I checked a Craigslist ad for a King 606 for $70. He had two! I took a good look at both. The better of the two has some dents in the slide and shows signs of prior slide crook repair, and the part of the slide tenon that should be on the slide is stuck in the bell part. The other one has a more dented bell but the slide is corroded beyond repair. Both tuning slides work. I ended up paying $40 for the pair including two decent intact cases and two small shank mouthpieces. My plan is to let my tech take the best parts of both horns and make one good one, giving him the parts for his stock of "My kid broke is horn and I can't afford new parts" stock. My wife, who keeps asking me why I have five playable trombones when I can only play one at a time, actually thinks this is a good idea! OK, my got the horn problem figured out, now I got to figure out how to take this 62 year old body to do stuff I did at 16...
