Tootsall

Patrick, I've written about this experience before; when I had the chance to go test fly four different models of Schilke (on the same day, in the same shop, and even unwrapped them from the factory packaging), I initially found that my intonation was horrible on all four of them! I had been playing a Bach also.

What we did was sort through the different mouthpieces that I had taken with me until we found that one that seemed to work best. Then the sales guy (who plays in the Edmonton Symphony) watched me for a few minutes and told me to "drop the lower jaw a hair and extend it just a bit". All of a sudden the intonation improved tremendously... I had been putting too much resistance into my embouchure and just needed to open it up a bit.

The next step was to work through his Warburton kit until we found the combo that sweetened everything up nicely... it turned out to be a 4B on a B10 backbore (very open backbore and increased gap). With that detective work out of the way I found that the intonation on all four Schilkes was suddenly better than I'd had with the Bach. (In fact, since the ML37 was with me I could prove that with the different chop set the intonation was better on the Schilke than it was on the Bach).

I realized that the set was so different from the (relatively) high resistance horn to the open horn that I made the decision right then that I'd never play the Bach again... and I didn't. I sold it about five months later. Not a knock on the Bach but just "a different animal".

Do yourself a favor and check out some different mouthpieces: I know that "everyone says" that you should play a Schilke mouthpiece on a Schilke horn...... but "everyone doesn't play a Schilke with YOUR chops".

trickg

Ok, I played the trumpet on a gig last night and I believe we have a winner! Surprisingly enough, using the bell-clip tuner as a guide, (the band uses backing tracks, so I can do this) intonation on this B6 seems to be more accurate thoughout the range than my Bach. The Bach tended to be really good right in the middle, but upper register was slightly sharp, and lower register also tended to be out, although lower it is much easier to lip in, so I'm not really sure which direction it is out. The Schilke, however, was very uniform throughout and I was surprised several times to glance over at the tuner to see that I was pretty much right on.

BUT....as I got tired, I started to blow sharp, and this is the kind of sharp where pulling the tuning slide doesn't help - we had a run of tunes that were chop busters.

As I have said before, I'm still in the air about which mouthpiece I am going to wind up using with this trumpet, and I'm going to use a different one next week to see how that goes. I have a feeling that next week will be better, both because of the mouthpiece I am going to use, (not quite as tight feeling as what I used last night) and also because I will have had another week on the trumpet and I will be more used to it.

Thanks for the replies. I'm going to do the blind test thing with the tuner and my wife for both trumpets to see what is what. I'll post the results of that if I do it.

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Patrick Gleason
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"What we do in life echoes in eternity"
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Heavens2kadonka

Every time you change horns, you will notice that there is an aclimation period to deal with. Some take longer than others.

I still sometimes have to stop playing for a moment, and gather my thoughts, if I go from my 37 to my Kanstul, or even to my Severinson. Each have different feels, and slightly different approaches to get the best sound from them.

Just cramming and blowing won't work, and that is one of the fundamental building blocks to being a decent trumpeter.

Van

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