Small son is having trouble with a bubbly sound on certain notes. It sounds as if he is blowing bubbles inside his euph. It seems to happen especially when he plays Eflat - no idea why.

Should I be taking things apart to clean them, or leaving well alone?

Hiya

Sounds as though there is some water trapped somewhere. Try taking all the slides out and tipping them to see if water is stuck in any of them. You could try spinning it around a couple of times, for some reason I found anticlockwise best, just in case it's stuck in a little corner somewhere, then open the water key and blow through.

(of all the brass instruments I've played, I would say euph is the worst for trapped water)

Let us know the result

Well, have pulled it all apart. Who knew there were quite so many bits?! And there was water not quite pouring out, but certiainly oozing out of every available aperture! Not sure if I have completely fixed it as small son is out at the mo, and I can't make anything other than morbid moans like a lonely buffalo on the euph, but it can't have done any harm!

Maybe I have very moist children? Larger son seems to fill his clarinet with spit and that special brand of woodwind slime at a rate that few others could aspire to...

Thanks. Here's hoping for a clear and resonant E flat later!

The larger brass do present problems. The worst ones are the ones with a compensating valve design, with extra small loops from one valve cylinder to another. These come into action only when two valves are depressed, and most of them lack removable slides. I play double horns, which are not quite as bad, but removing all the valve slides to get rid of water can take longer than the next set of rests is going to last. What one needs to do is work out how to manoeuvre the instrument and the valve levers so as to get all that water into one or two main tuning slides and remove that/them to shed all the water quickly. On a euphonium, you are likely to have one or two water keys, to they are the preferred destinations if you can work out a similar trick for your son's instrument. This could be difficult. I was totally defeated by a visiting compensating baritone horn (same length as a euph and similar valve layout) of unusual design, that had a long fixed loop between valves one and three.

A valve on a simple instrument has one tube on the mouthpiece side, one on the bell side and a loop of tubing out and in to its cylinder. Valves on a compensator have more tubing than this. The point is to make accurate tuning easier.