pangaea

Well, after playing nowave's Tanabified Schilke, I was converted. I sent my B1Lb off a few weeks ago to the Brass Bow and had Wayne do a PVA.

My horn is about two years old. The orignal felts and pads were never quite right, even after a year-and-a-half of solid playing. They just didn't compress enough. I recently got replacements from the factory. These were much better but still didn't match the feeling I experienced on nowave's horn. So I scheduled the PVA (and an ultrasonic cleaning as well).

The result is a horn with dramatically improved valve action and a fantastically open lower register (if any of you listened to my Wild Thing horn comparison clips in the WT forum above, you hear the pre-PVA schilke). It's really quite amazing. A small part of this can be attributed to the cleaning, but not much--I've always kept my horns clean and leadpipes swabbed frequently.

So the question is--given how fine Schilkes are (the best valves and slides I've ever experienced, the best "fit and finish" out there) why doesn't the factory do something about the valve alignment situation? it seems like it would be a relatively small problem to remedy, and something that a trumpet of this caliber deserves.

Just a few thoughts from another Schilke Loyalist.