Minick leadpipes

[SwissTbone]

I play on a set of minick leadpipes on my tenor and bass trombone. I dont know when those leadpipes have been made, but they begin to show their age.

Knowing that they are very rare and therefore hard to replace makes me a little nervous. Anyone is selling copies of minick leadpipes?

If not, is it possible to copy leadpipes at a reasonable cost and expecting similar playing characteristics?

[ngrinder]

Kanstul has copies of Minick pipes - I believe it’s what the majority of their inventory are based on.

However, having played both a copy and an original Minick pipe back to back, I wager you’d get something closer to the pipe you have by having a really competent tech make a copy of it.

[SwissTbone]

Oh yes I played some Kanstul leadpipes on tenor. Didnt think they where very similar to my minicks.

[Driswood]

Brad Close?

[SwissTbone]

Brad Close?

Thats the guy working with brassark.com right?

[brassmedic]

I make the leadpipes that are sold on Brassark.com. They are also available on my site: Brassmedic.com.

It would be expensive to make a one-off copy of a Minick pipe. Producing a new mandrel takes a considerable amount of work. I have thought about producing a Minick copy; I may do that in the future when I have time to make the mandrel. The difficulty is deciding which one to copy, as they were all individual and often customized for the customer by hand.

Brad Close

[hornbuilder]

As Brad mentioned, a one off leadpipe is VERY expensive. It is also not a job for any average tech!

M

[Tbarh]

How about making leadpipes in 547 or 562 versions? Do You need to make completely New moulds for that?.. For instance if You would keep the same leadpipe if You want to downsize to a 547/562 slide for bass, or want to "go Friedman" and use a 562 slide on Tenor without changing leadpipe..

Trond

[baileyman]

You know, every leadpipe I have seen has been beautifully centered. Spun? Yet the air doesn't care. It should be perhaps easier to make them as lopsided straws at low cost?

[Leanit]

Interesting thought. I love my .500 Minick and would hate to lose it to corrosion or something in the future.

[hyperbolica]

Agree.

[brassmedic]

You know, every leadpipe I have seen has been beautifully centered. Spun? Yet the air doesn't care. It should be perhaps easier to make them as lopsided straws at low cost?

You're not just blowing air, though. You're producing a standing sound wave, and that wave cares very much about the internal profile of the tube it is inhabiting. Case in point: The Jinbao alto trombone is a pretty good copy of the K&H Slokar alto, but the leadpipe that comes with it is haphazardly made and the instruments play rather poorly out of the box. But replace it with a K&H pipe or a good copy and the instrument plays pretty decently.

[baileyman]

...
You're not just blowing air, though. You're producing a standing sound wave, and that wave cares very much about the internal profile of the tube it is inhabiting. ...

Yes, I am thinking about the wave in the air.

Never having made a pipe I would expect to take a sheet trimmed to the correct widths to make circumferences and then fold over and join. If the resulting pipe is round in cross section at all points, it seems like it would not matter if it were beautifully centered along the length and could be straight along one side, avoiding the cost of the centering step. I don't think the wave would care.

But I could be wrong. It does seem like a way to make pipes less expensively, doesn't it?

[BGuttman]

Actually, the wave does care. Acoustic waves are compression/rarefaction and not simple sines. The shape of the pipe in which they reside can alter the wave. Our models generally require an axial symmetry to be valid.

I would expect a non-symmetrical pipe to alter the mix of overtones. Similar to the problem of a deep dent in the tuning slide or handslide bow.

[baileyman]

Actually, the wave does care. Acoustic waves are compression/rarefaction and not simple sines. The shape of the pipe in which they reside can alter the wave. Our models generally require an axial symmetry to be valid.

I would expect a non-symmetrical pipe to alter the mix of overtones. Similar to the problem of a deep dent in the tuning slide or handslide bow.

Maybe you mean "Similar to having a straight vs curved tuning slide"? As a dent destroys the circular cross section that the proposed leadpipes would still have.

A test would be to take a conventional leadpipe and plastically deform it to be linear on one side and compare.

[brassmedic]

...
You're not just blowing air, though. You're producing a standing sound wave, and that wave cares very much about the internal profile of the tube it is inhabiting. ...

Yes, I am thinking about the wave in the air.

Never having made a pipe I would expect to take a sheet trimmed to the correct widths to make circumferences and then fold over and join. If the resulting pipe is round in cross section at all points, it seems like it would not matter if it were beautifully centered along the length and could be straight along one side, avoiding the cost of the centering step. I don't think the wave would care.

But I could be wrong. It does seem like a way to make pipes less expensively, doesn't it?

Not at all. As far as I know, I am the only one who makes seamed leadpipes, and it is much more difficult than making a drawn leadpipe. Simply "folding over and joining" does not produce a pipe that is round in cross section. It still must be refined over a mandrel. The precision needed to make the correct taper is not something that can be achieved with just the naked eye.

I do think I see what you're getting at though. Does it need to be perfectly straight? I'm not sure that it does. Customers get upset if it isn't straight though, so I make sure it is.

[SwissTbone]

Wouldnt a non straight leadpipe interfere with the slide?