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I repair brass instruments. There are lots of people doing it for a living, but for a computer toucher like me, it's a satisfying hobby. It started with acquiring a vintage instrument that needed some work, and seeing that sending it to a pro would be cost-prohibitive. I've since bought more old horns and practiced on them until I feel like I have a grip on the basics. I've gotten to where I've done a few repairs on friends' instruments that turned out cosmetically quite nice! I'll see if I can find some nice before/after pictures later, Imgur seems to have crapped out right now.
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Feb 8, 2024 23:34
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 05:51 |
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dinahmoe posted:Do you ever work with saxophones? I know it’s a lot more buttons and keys than brass. I have a 1928 Conn 10M that I got for $800 in 1988. I played it for years, but it fell apart about 10 years ago, after surviving a car accident in a soft gig bag. I was quoted over $3000 to get it fixed. I love that horn I’ve stayed away from woodwinds since I don’t play them, and just felt that brasswinds are enough for now… There is some overlap of skills between the two (repairing them, that is, but mechanics and pad adjustment on saxophones look like they would take a lot of time and effort to learn. Requires a while new set of tools, too. The reason they charge a lot for sax work is that complexity. The shop has to stock spare parts for dozens of common model saxes, and every pad and lever has to be replaced and carefully adjusted to seal properly. I don’t know how it could end up at $3000, that seems like a lot. Fallen apart as in parts missing and dented, perhaps? It could be worth looking at sending it out to a different shop, they can charge pretty different hourly rates depending on region. My biggest problem is I live in an inner city apartment and don’t have room for big equipment. If I wanted to do this professionally I would require at least a good metal lathe. As it is, I can order work from the pro shops, but it’s too expensive to be viable plus the lead times can be long. So I have to say no to a lot of work. Which works out, since I don’t have to take on more than I want. I was given an antique tuba which I’m planning to work on, at least to get it playable. Have to get some new tubing drawn before I take it all apart and start in earnest. I’m kind of dreading it because I know it’s going to take at least 100 to 200 hours of labor to get the dents out and patch it up so it’s airtight again.
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Feb 9, 2024 13:55
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Tree Bucket posted:I hope you live in south eastern Australia, because the intercontinental postage costs for a euphonium are probably Not Nice Yeah mailing euphoniums internationally is an expensive proposition. Unfortunately I’m in Sweden. I’m sure they have good brass techs in your area, because they tend to crop up everywhere. 
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Feb 9, 2024 14:06
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BalloonFish posted:I think I've done nine in total at a rate of about one a year. But I haven't actually worked on one for over a decade now since I moved to a place without the spare space to work on a reed organ in its dismantled form. That’s awesome! It’s a great feeling, isn’t it, knowing that something was sitting unused for 50 years until you made it playable again and now it might stay playable for another 50. I dabbled for a while in piano repair, when I was poor and could only get a free-but-barely-playable one. Of course I didn’t recoup the cost of the tools but I had a lot of fun tuning pianos I randomly encountered in my life. Like, the grand piano that was for some reason put in the staff lunch room at my summer job. Spent a couple of lunch breaks tuning it and after that some other staff started playing it! Ended up selling the tools (apart from the tuning levers) to a local piano tech for a discount on a professionally-restored piano.
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Feb 10, 2024 13:49
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Hippie Hedgehog posted:Yeah mailing euphoniums internationally is an expensive proposition. Unfortunately I’m in Sweden. I’m sure they have good brass techs in your area, because they tend to crop up everywhere. Here's a repair I did on a friend's euph recently. It had a broken case and fell out, bell first onto the floor from about shoulder height. The damage was actually less than I would have expected. Those B&H Imperial horns were built really solid. Before:   After:   This repair was dead simple, really, just needed a steel roller and plenty of lubricant. Lots of elbow grease, too, and patience. The after pictures might have turned out nicer if I had cleaned the horn and polished it before taking them -- my friend wanted to do that himself though.
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Feb 12, 2024 13:59
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 05:51 |
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Wow, that reminds me, I briefly got into the hobby of producing song files for UltraStar Deluxe. It's an open-source implementation of Singstar, you know, that PS2 trend from the mid-2000's where the game scores you on your pitch and timing. You start by sequencing the melody as a MIDI file. Then you make a text file, similar to a subtitles file, with note-for-note syllables/words. And finally you pair this with an mpeg file of the music video of the tune. Zip it up and you're done. There was a surprising amount of content out there that was sloppily made or just full of errors in the music transcription. For someone with the right type of personality, it felt pretty satisfying. Regrettably (but not surprisingly), all the public repositories for this type of file kept getting taken down. I think I uploaded 4 or 5 songs before giving up that hobby. One fun thing was when I produced Ultrastar versions of a band's original tunes for one-time use at the release party of the album. Put a machine up in the lobby of the event and fun times were had.
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Mar 20, 2024 12:30
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