Care and Maintenance

Your brasswind instrument needs regular care-taking

Like this you will keep it in good order for a long time and avoid necessity for more difficult repairs. To help you in taking proper care, each instrument is equipped with a small accessory bag filled with a soft cloth, slide grease and a bottle of valve oil especially suited to your instrument.

We strongly recommend to take care of your instrument only with these mentioned accessory products. Please never try to make even small repairs by yourself. In these cases, please contact a qualified brasswind specialist to assist you.

Rotary valves

In case your rotary valve instrument does not respond in the usual way, please check for correct valve alignment by looking for the marks under the bottom valve cap. If the marks on the bearing plate and the rotor do not align perfectly, you should check the corks in the horseshoes.

A wornout waterkey cork will also result in bad sound and response. Your dealer usually has these and other spare parts on stock. If other problems occur, please do not hesitate to contact your local dealer who usually can solve problems quickly. All outer moving parts have to be oiled from time to time.

This is necessary to ensure unconfined function of the instrument and to protect it from damages due to worn out 3B-linkages and key levers. Please oil weekly the spindle bearings on top (below stop arm) and at the bottom of the valve (you must remove the valve cap first). Each 3B-linkage should be oiled once a month.

Push the levers a couple of times to make sure the oil is spread evenly. Playing steadily keeps the inner moving parts, the valve rotors, lubricated enough. They only should be oiled before the instrument will not be played for a longer time to avoid the rotors getting stuck.

In this case apply a few drops of piston valve oil through the leadpipe while moving the rotary valves. Never insert oil into the valve slides, because this may wash the slide grease into the valve with the effect of slowing down the rotor!

Piston valves

You should oil the valves of your instrument preferably every time before and after playing. Therefore please remove the top cap and take out the piston carefully.

Clean it with a lint-free cloth and apply several drops of oil near the top of the piston. Gently rotate the piston as it is being reinserted into the casing until the piston guide snaps in the keyway. Rescrew the top cap onto the casing.

Ensure that each valve is reinserted into its original casing. Note: At the beginning of playing the instrument a black film can appear on the surface of the monel pistons.

This is absolutely normal when running in a new instrument and does not pose a deficiency at all! This is only monel dust that has to be removed when cleaning the instrument. After some time of playing no dust will arise anymore.

Greasing the valve slides

Moving and greasing main tuning and valve slides from time to time will help to prevent sticking slides. To grease the slides, first remove the slide and wipe off the old grease, then apply fresh slide grease to the end of one slide tube and twist this slide tube while pushing it in. This will evenly distribute the grease.

Repeat with second slide tube; then insert the slide normally and wipe off excessive grease. If the slides seem hard-working, a little oil can be used to thin the grease. Always make sure that no grease gets inside the tubing!

Cleaning the instrument

To protect the instrument from its first day on, it is coated with a special surface treatment. You can help to keep your instrument in its original condition by keeping the following in mind: Hard objects like watches, rings or other jewellery, objects of your clothing as buttons and belt buckles may cause scratches even On the highly resistant durable lacquer and galvanic surface refinements.

After playing, be sure to wipe your instrument off with a soft cloth, if necessary with a special lacquer polish or silver polish. Flush out the instrument periodically using a cleaning brush. Afterwards, rinse the instrument with lukewarm, clean water and finally apply oil to the valves as well as grease to the slides as already described.

Also, the instrument should be given some time to dry after playing – packing it into a case or gig bag while still moist will lead to corrosion in the long term. Consider it a daily task to clean the mouthpiece with a small brush. Even small particles in the backbore can influence the response and intonation drastically.

Trombone hand slide

For greasing your trombone hand slide you received a can of cream with your instrument. Clean the outer and inner slide first, following apply some of the cream onto the shoe (part of the inside slide, P1) and draw a trace of cream with your fingertip along both tubes of the slide (P2). If needed, spray some water onto the inner slide using a vaporizer until it is able to slip as desired.