This is brilliant. I've learnt so much from your videos. I've got a massive collection of instruments and so learning about dent removal and restoration is very interesting to me. I wish I knew this stuff before I started some of my older projects
These videos are excellent! I live in Singapore and have spent 30 years teaching brass bands at a Salvation Army-run boys home in Medan (Indonesia) in my spare time. Recently, we started a small amateur brass repair facility (workshop) in Indonesia. The aim is to use this facility to service the needs of this band (now about 60 members, including a junior band!) as well as the growing network of brass bands in Salvation Army churches across the Indonesian archipelago. The reason for creating the workshop, of course, is because we use second hand instruments, and we simply cannot continue to pay high prices for brass instrument repairs in Singapore. Last year I imported specialist tools and supplies from the US and Britain. I also purchased several textbooks on instrument repair. But because these books were all in English, I was not able to use them to train Indonesians. But your videos are a godsend! Our budding technicians can watch and follow along with minimal translation from me. I have learned a lot and have been passing it along as we experiment on old instruments. We have even begun to earn some extra income from repairing instruments belonging to other community bands. Thank you so much! Please, please keep it up!
I agree. My feeling is that an old instrument is also a piece of history that deserve restoration. As a brass musician, I really enjoy your videos and learn a lot about do, and do not looking the restoration failures in old instruments.
I play one of these cornets in the brass group I'm in. Mine was made in 1913. It has a really nice sound! Mine in particular needs a valve job pretty badly, but other than that it's in decent shape. I use the "extra" tuning slide as a "valve trigger", by extending it with my right thumb, and pushing it back with my left.
I restored a York Perfectone like yours. It was missing that knob on the crook from the leadpipe, so it's cool to see yours. I sold it for $200 in great playing condition, although it still didn't look "perfect". So indeed, there are people looking for horns like these.
Great idea, please keep this series up. I have a cornet that was presented the Royal Welsh Guards and used in France during WWI. I would love to restore it as it has seen better days! Your videos may go some way to helping me achieve this!
I have a 1921 one of these Perfec-tones, in my case in C-Bb-A with an extra leadpipe crook (essentially) that replaces the first main tuning slide. I'm not quite sure what to make of your example with the LP marked on the valve slides, as I haven't seen a variant offered with the A change replaced by a HP-LP conversion. Usually they provided a replacement second tuning slide, which seems to bring it down to somewhere below A=435. The 1905 date seems a bit early, as York published an advertisement in May 1910 introducing the Perfec-tone as new, and the earliest example in Horn-u-Copia's detail record of York serial numbers (with around 5000 instruments listed) appears in late 1909. I'm excited to watch the rest of this series, it really is a great cornet design!
I've got a cornet that many at a cornet site on Facebook would consider turning into either a wallhanger or a lamp:its a Nadir Ali made in Meerkut,India.Its in nice shape but when I looked closely at the seam where the bell flare is soldered on to the pipe going back to the first valve,there is a split at the seam.I also have a "Raisons" trumpet in silver plate which is made in the same town.What kind of gas do you use when you solder? I was once told by a repairman some thirty five years ago it was "prestolite".I would have guessed a mixture of oxygen and acetolyne.
J.W. York. One of York's last employees before they went under in the 1970s was on Trumpetmaster.com as "oldlou". He offered a wealth of information on York instruments to anyone who asked. Unfortunately, both he and the web site are gone.
