chops1

Here is an email that I received from Dave at Calicchio on my new horn.
Give's some good info on how the new shop is coming along and what there up to.

"I hope the holidays are going well for you! John has five horns on his bench
in process, one of which is yours. We still haven't made it around to trying
out the satin finish yet, so we still have quite a bit to do. We have a
couple of trade shows coming up (NAMM in Anaheim and IAJE in New York) in
January, so we have to make horns for those shows. We also are looking
forward to Chuck Findley coming out next week, so we have a lot on our plate
right now. I wish I could tell you that your horn was right around the
corner, but with only four people in the shop, John tends to get stretched
out pretty thin.

We have had to drop what we have been doing to make a run of valve guides,
so we'll be able to finish all of the show horns and the five on John's
bench. We are still in the process of re-engineering parts and reworking
tooling to make sure that parts come out correctly. Rather than using old,
worn out tools and machinery, we have replaced much of both so we can make
horns that go together right and play right from the get-go.

After we spent a month running electric, we have had to put a lot of time
into working on the valve casings. We have also had to look into ten to
twenty measurements involved in the specs of the casings, balusters and
pistons. It's amazing how many different aspects of a set of pistons and a
valve casing have to be within a thousandth or two. In a lot of ways, it's a
fascinating process to learn how a valve section comes together, but the
downside is that we haven't been able to get your horn out.
I hope you'll have an opportunity to visit the shop sometime. As a player,
it's incredibly eye-opening to see how trumpets are made. It's also very
impressive to see how doing things right makes horns come out playing
beautifully.

One of the things I've tried to take advantage of is the occasional Domenick
horn that comes through. I've had a few Domenicks sent out for trial, in
order to compare them with John's work. So far, I haven't found any of
Domenick's axes to be on the same level as John's work. I picked up a 1s7
that belonged to Judy Garland's lead player, Johnny Bello, that is supposed
to be one of the best 1s7's out there. In comparing it to a 1s7 that we are
in the process of finishing, I found John's horn to have more core to the
sound, improved slotting and nicer response. I'm looking forward to Chuck's
visit, since he should have one of the best 1s2's made by Domenick. We'll
see what Chuck thinks about John's work next week"