Maintenance
Care tips from Engelbert Schmid: how to oil the valves, grease the slides and clean the mouthpipe – and what your repairman must pay attention to. Plus the recommended slide positions.
With the right care, your original Engelbert Schmid horn can accompany you for a lifetime – even a life span of 100 years or more is easily possible. The most important rule: care for your horn as much as necessary, but above all only have it overhauled by an instrument maker who knows what is important and has the right tools.
I offer a free adjustment of the valves after 3 to 4 months.
Care instructions
For the further care of your instrument, please follow these points:
Oil the valve bearings from the outside every four weeks. Use medium-light oil, half a drop each on the top and bottom valve bearings, on the linkages and on the lever axles. Take care not to get oil on the stopper silicones, otherwise they will swell or even jump out.
If you oil the valve bearings too little, water and with it lime deposit – a very poor lubricant – get into the bearings, and the valves will inevitably stick. This is the cause of about 90% of valve problems. In this case you need to have the lime deposit removed, only by rotating the valve and cleaning it with a cloth, not with acid.
If you oil the valve bearings too much, the oil creeps inside and makes the valves sluggish. In this case you have two options:
- Either remove the valve and clean rotor and casing with a cloth,
- or let thin oil drip into the valve through the slides without washing slide grease in with it. You will then have to repeat this regularly. This is the easier method, because you do not have to develop a feeling for the right amount.
For players with alkaline saliva it is an advantage to oil the inside as well, because then lime deposit cannot build up.
Clean the mouthpipe with a brush approximately every 6 months. The rest of the instrument normally does not need to be cleaned.
Grease the slides before the old grease dries out. Take care that no grease gets into the inner bore, and push the slides fully in several times while greasing in order to push away the lime deposit.
Replace the strings once a year as a precaution, whether it seems necessary or not.
If the valves get too noisy and oiling does not help, please go to an instrument maker as soon as possible. The most important thing in any repair is that the valve bearings on the actuation side are reseated along the whole length of the journal. For this the repairman needs a reseating tool. The usual reseating sleeves are not sufficient, because they do not reseat along the whole length. Any up-and-down play has to be eliminated by reseating the bearing plate on the screw cap side.
Heavy lime deposit is ground down by rotating the rotor with oil, without the bearing plate on the screw cap side, and then wiped away with a cloth. The remaining layer of lime and the dark oxide layer should stay. Cleaning the rotors in an acid bath is wrong. The sealing surfaces never need to be lapped and must under no circumstances be polished. On original Engelbert Schmid horns, however, mistreated rotors can be replaced with new ones.
Black spots under the lacquer: Despite the most careful degreasing and drying before lacquering, black spots can develop under the lacquer in individual cases, e.g. at the bell rim. The reason is that remains of liquids used in cleaning want to escape as gas, are trapped by the lacquer and spread further and further between metal and lacquer; the gas finds tiny capillaries through the soldering. If you pierce such a spot with a needle as soon as it begins to form, it will not grow any larger. Because of the many imponderables and the fact that we do not do the lacquering ourselves, we cannot give a guarantee on the lacquer.
Before any work is done on your horn, please have the repairman you trust read point 4.
Yours, Engelbert Schmid
Recommended slide positions
Recommended slide positions for the Bb and F sides, raisable to B natural/F# and lowerable to A/E.
Bb/F
Pull out the main tuning slide as needed (e.g. 10 mm). F tuning slide to the 1st mark plus individual adjustment (e.g. 5 mm beyond the 1st mark).
| Slide | Pulled out |
|---|---|
| 1st Bb slide | 10 mm |
| 2nd Bb slide | 5 mm |
| 3rd Bb slide | 10 mm |
| 1st F slide | 14 mm |
| 2nd F slide | not pulled out |
| 3rd F slide | not pulled out |
B natural/F#
Pull out the main tuning slide without the intermediate piece as needed (e.g. 10 mm). F# slide as needed (e.g. 5 mm). Push all valve slides fully in.
A/E
Pull out the intermediate piece and the main tuning slide each to the marks, plus the individual adjustment once (e.g. 10 mm). E slide to the 2nd mark plus individual adjustment (e.g. 5 mm).
| Slide | Pulled out |
|---|---|
| 1st Bb slide | 20 mm |
| 2nd Bb slide | 10 mm |
| 3rd Bb slide | 25 mm |
| 1st F slide | 28 mm |
| 2nd F slide | 7 mm |
| 3rd F slide | 21 mm |