I've been playing for around 14 years and never really got into any other horn besides the Bb,...obviously

I had some questions I was hoping this community might be able to help answer.

1.) some picc's have 4 valves, some have 3, yet both are Bb/Ab or Bb/C picc's. What is the 4th valve used for?

2.) I have been looking through ebay for some piccolo trumpets. One power seller has some listed for 50 bucks. They are listed as brand new, but I am skeptical. I am not looking to spend $3,000 on a schilke, but I dont want a piece of trash either.

3.) Are there certain mouthpieces for piccolo trumpets? If so, what size would be good for someone who is used to playing on a Bach 3C?

I played a Benge Picc in a local music store. I really liked it and the sound was nice, but they want $1100 for a trumpet that is all oxidized from sitting around for a year.

anyways, any help is appreciated

Thanks in advance.

Pics with the 4th valve allow you to play the lower octave (ie the normal B flat octave) - though it's pretty ropey!

Don't go near cheap pics - the expensive ones are hard enough to get in tune! I play a Yamaha, one of the cheaper serious instruments out there, and its still v hard to tune. The dream pic is the Shilke, but they come with a hefty price tag!

You do really need a different mouthpiece to your normal B flat one (some pics have different shafts so don't take normal mouthpieces, others don't). It's really a question of personal preference. Warburton do some really cool mouthpieces that come in two parts - the cup and the shaft can be bought independently so you can mix & match. What you've got to balance is resistance to help you get up high with tone.

Good luck - playing the pic can be great fun!

awsome, great info.

as for range, yeah I found it odd that it was not as easy as I thought it would be to do a C scale on the picc. When I got to the high C I really had to concentrate on keeping it in tune.

I am going to have to go back to breathing studys to play one of these

have you ever heard of this brand of picc?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...me=STRK:MEWA:IT

another question I had was, some of the picc's have extended bells and others do not.

As far as sound is concerned, do the extended bells give a more more precise sound as opposed to the short bells?

piccolo trumpets are cool, although i myself have a pocket cornet - this is a scaled down cornet with 3 valves ; its pretty hard to play though so it does just sit around.....
*bugles are the ultimate!*

I, too, would like to know about the Marcus Martini brand. At first I had confused it with Amati, which I hear is too crummy to spend money on, and they cost $545.

What I don't get is this: If they can build a student model trumpet that costs $200 and kids from grade 5-12 can play with them and perform with them, and sometimes even sound good with them, then how come nobody can make a student model piccolo trumpet for $200 that's the same quality and build as the Bb trumpets that go for the same price. That makes sense to me. I can handle forking over $200 for a fair-quality trumpet, but I can't handle forking over $1500 for a fair-quality piccolo.

So these Martini trumpets kind of look promising. Standard models around $200-$300, and "professional" models around $400-$500, which makes them look almost respectable.

I looked at the other instruments made by Marcus Martini and they're all things like guitars and mandolins and weird things like that, so I worry that buying a Martini piccolo is just throwing money away.

yeah from everything I have read and been told, if you are going to buy a picc, spend money and get a nice one. A Schilke or a Bach Strad or a Stomvi

Well, I did it. I bought a Martini piccolo. I'm not expecting a whole lot, but I am hoping for something better than what I've heard about the Indian horns. I've heard they sound tinny and aren't much good for anything except hanging them on a wall.

I'm pretty sure the Martini instruments are made in China, and although there's no way to predict what quality is going to come out of it, if someone in China did care about quality, they have the resources to produce something of quality without it costing terribly much.

I bought the cheapest of the set. Martini has a professional model, a deluxe student model and a basic model. I went for the basic model for money reasons. I know a guy that has a professional model Martini, and he says it actually plays pretty well. But the ad for that model says you can feel the difference from the basic models, so I just hope the one I'm getting isn't too far below the professional model.

I won't be getting it for a couple weeks, still, but after I get it and play on it a bit, I'll post to share my experience.

QUOTE (hunkymonkey @ Nov 9 2004, 10:01 AM)

I won't be getting it for a couple weeks, still, but after I get it and play on it a bit, I'll post to share my experience.

please do

Well, I got it. And before I give my review of it, let me warn you that I don't have any reference for any of this--I've never played another piccolo trumpet, so I don't know how good or bad they can be.

The Marcus Martini piccolo trumpet is not even as good as I expected it to be. My expectations were not very high, as I bought it for under $200, but I had hoped that it would play something like my Bach student Bb trumpet. First, though, maybe I'd better give it credit where due, then I'll get into my complaints about it.

First, the tone is fairly nice. It plays a nice, clear, non-tinny, non-tubby sound in the upper registers. Lower down (pretty much anywhere below the staff) you start to lose the clarity of the tone, adding an airy background noise, getting worse the lower you go. Seems to me that lot of piccolos would have that problem, since you're basically shooting for pedal notes down there.

Second, it feels fairly sturdy. It's not as light as I thought it would be. And the tubing feels thicker and heavier than it looked like in the pictures. Could be that's why the sound's as good as it is.

Third, I like the case. It's not the best, of course, it's just that it's not an empty box like you see in the pictures of the Indian horns. It's got a molded, padded, fuzz-covered area that the trumpet fits nicely in, with a small area to the side for valve oil and a cloth, and a spot for one mouthpiece. However, the cover of the case is just a thin layer of leather (vinyl?) over wood, and when I got it, it already had a small cut in it, showing the wood underneath.

Ok, now for my complaints.

First, tuning. I shouldn't complain too much, since it's a Bb piccolo, not an A piccolo. I was hoping I could slide out the tuning slide to get it in the key of A (which actually works pretty well with my normal trumpet), but the slide isn't quite long enough to do that justice. Ideally, I suppose I'd go out and buy an A leadpipe for it, but I don't know how interchangeable different brands of leadpipes are, plus I don't think I could stomach spending $150 on a leadpipe for a $200 trumpet, and I doubt Marcus Martini makes leadpipes.

Also, individual tuning of different notes is far from perfect. The reason I bought this trumpet was to play "The Trumpet Shall Sound", in Handel's Messiah. On an A trumpet, the song ends up being in the key of F. So the first three notes you play are F, A, and C. But what you hear are F, A, and C#. A slightly flat C#, but definitely closer to C# than C-natural. What I've been doing is playing F-A-B, because it's easier to lip the B up to a C than to lip the C# (which is really a C) down to a C.

The third valve is way too long, or something. If you're playing a chromatic scale down from the low C (first line under the staff), it sounds like C-B-Bb-A-G (rather than Ab). It's that bad.

Up high, the notes are a bit better behaved, although some lipping is definitely necessary to get them in tune. The first space F sounds best if I drop out the 4th valve tuning slide as far as it goes and play it 1 & 4. It's a bit sharp with just valve 1, which can be tuned but only about a quarter inch or so. The G just above that F comes out pretty sharp, but when I remember, if I play it 1 & 3, it sounds okay.

Now, valves are another sticking (literally) point. I cleaned and oiled the valves about 5 times after I got it, and the first valve still would not return smoothly. Since I need this trumpet soon, I don't have time to wait for the guy's slow shipping if I were to return it for a replacement. So when I decided I was going to keep the trumpet, I pulled the spring out of the first valve piston and stretched it out a bit. It mostly fixed the problem, but I can still tell there's a problem further down the shaft that's causing it to stick.

Plus the valves are rather noisy. You can hear the springs shifting around while you play, although my wife tells me you can't hear it when it's being played.

Other than that, there's a brace whose corner is bent away from the tubing a bit, and it's really sharp, although it's in a place that it'll never get me. The finish is nice, but right around the edge of the bell (where the edge of the metal is rolled over), there's a lot of green and black goo, where apparently they were unable to get their polishing brushes into. There are a couple scratches in a couple places, not noticeable without a very thorough examination, though.

For a cost-value rating, I'd give it a 4/5. For an overall value rating, I'd give it a 2/5.

Anyone thinking of buying one, also consider the seller. If you look through all his feedback, you'll find a lot of rudeness. There will be lots of comments about slow shipping, too. And, as I found out, you might really be wanting to return it for an exchange after you get it. So only buy it if you have time to wait two weeks to get it, and another week for it to get back to the guy, and another two weeks for you to get another one, etc. And don't dream of leaving bad feedback for the guy, or he'll rip you apart in response and leave you bad feedback to boot. I've even seen some feedbacks that were positive, and he still couldn't restrain from posting a nasty reply.

Hope this helps. Email me if you have more questions-brettjconley@msn.com

And one more thing--didn't realize this when I bought it, but there are no water keys. It doesn't collect spit as readily as my regular trumpet, so I guess it's not the end of the world, but when it does, have to do a loop-de-loop to get it out, kind of like a french horn.

QUOTE (hunkymonkey @ Nov 23 2004, 11:35 PM)

And one more thing--didn't realize this when I bought it, but there are no water keys. It doesn't collect spit as readily as my regular trumpet, so I guess it's not the end of the world, but when it does, have to do a loop-de-loop to get it out, kind of like a french horn.

i realise i'm being pedantic and picky but some horns do have water keys, mine does lol i'm annoying

QUOTE (unclassifiable @ Oct 16 2004, 09:12 PM)

piccolo trumpets are cool, although i myself have a pocket cornet - this is a scaled down cornet with 3 valves ; its pretty hard to play though so it does just sit around..... *bugles are the ultimate!*

lol... m'dear you are crazy... but bugles are amazing, i agree!

QUOTE (cheeble @ Nov 24 2004, 05:29 PM)

i realise i'm being pedantic and picky but some horns do have water keys, mine does lol i'm annoying

They're pretty rare. I think horn designers reckon that they might upset the sound. The late Christopher Monk made replica sackbuts, matching early design features (though not materials: you can't get brass as bad as what they used before c. 1750) as exactly as possible with just one exception: he had a water key, to a new design of his own, that fitted flush to the original inner shape of the tubing.