I came across a cheap chinese rotary valve piccolo
trumpet on Ebay and paid about $400 for it. The brand is "International
Sound" but I happen to know that its made by Jinbao, China's largest
group of instrument factories. Its clearly based on the Scherzer design
but this one has a bore of 11.5mm compared to the Scherzer's 10.4mm.
Does it work? Well, yes it does. When it arrived I
discovered it takes normal trumpet shank mouthpieces so I could not
usemy piccolo trumpet mouthpiece (which is cornet shank). There was a
rather dodgy looking mouthpiece in the box which said 7c on it so I put
that in, played a couple of scales and then turned on my webcam. This
is the result:
It sounded a bit flat towards the top of the
range. I managed to find an adaptor to fit my normal mouthpiece to it
and that seems to have corrected the intonation. The alleged 7c was far
too deep, closer to a Bach 6 in cup shape.
I spent most of a day working through lots of
literature from Bach, Handel and Telemann and it sounds very lyrical as
you would expect from a rotary trumpet.
The problem is that quality control in China is so
poor its possible the next one in the batch would be a real dog, so if
you decided to take the chance on one you should try and play a few.
Obviously another important issue is that it is a
rotary valve trumpet. If you have never played a rotary then you will
find the adjustment quite difficult so first impressions might not be
very good. For example, slurring on a rotary is not as good as on
piston valve instrument because the valves cut the air flow more
abruptly.
Update 28th January 2008
Well, I am doing the Telmann Concerto for trumpet
and two oboes with orchestra in March and have decided to give the
rotary piccolo a chance to perform. I am now using my Monette AP1-5
mouthpiece jammed into a cornet to trumpet adaptor with some insulating
tape.
This is some video of me practicing the concerto.
Poor audio is due to the webcam microphone.
Some general practicing of the Telemann, working
on my trills and tone:
Telemann 1st movement:
Telemann 3rd movement:
The other Telmann concerto in D last movement (bad
top notes - sorry)
How to hold a rotary valve piccolo trumpet:
These two clips were done on a different
microphone and the trumpet has a Blackburn leadpipe fitted which makes
the intonation better but impedes the upper register a bit on the very
open mouthpiece I am using. I think to get the best from that setup you
would need to be using a conventional Bach, Yamaha or Schilke
mouthpiece set up.
