Valve Trombone Bb to C Convertion

On occation, we have customers who purchase old valve trombones and want them converted from Bb to C. They use them for a nice midrange horn that doesn't need concert pitch music transposed.

This is one I cut down.

It had red rot throughout the upper and lower leadpipes, some superglued solder points, and a broken brace. Other than that, it was in decent shape.

I started by disassembling and cleaning it. 

In order to shorten the horn, I had to almost completely disassemble it. There were only a few solder points that did not need to come apart.

I replaced the upper and lower leadpipes with some similar I.D. nickel silver tubing we had.

 The O.D was slightly larger so I had to machine some ferrules to accommodate.

In order to change the pitch from Bb to C about 20% of the tubing has to be removed. So every tube was measured and cut to an appropriate length.

Before I soldered everything together, I slapped it together with masking tape and playtested it to make sure the tuning was right.

After the pitch was confirmed I soldered her all up. It played pretty much on pitch. Just as well as any other valve trombone.