After pulling it out from storage and doing some serious restoring to it, I practiced on it from 6-8 hours a day. I pretty much ate, shit and slept with guitar in hand. It took me 9 months to become a proficient jazz guitarist. I used many of the current technology during my practice sessions to get to where I needed to be. Programs like Band In A Box and recording myself using Cakewalk's Sonar allowed me to play along to sound tracks and then listen and critique myself after recording my performances.
My keyboard and guitar playing has become limited these days due to arthritis, so serious thought was needed to choose an instrument where I didn't have to use all of my fingers. My choices were narrowed down to trombone or trumpet. I didn't want to wear out my arm using the slide on the trombone and considered valve trombone but, it was just too expensive for me to spend that kind of money on something I didn't know whether I could handle playing at my age, or how long I would be interested in playing anymore. After spending plenty of time on the internet researching, I decided to go with the flugelhorn, a cousin of the trumpet. I found a couple of flugelhorns that fit into my budget and if I didn't last, my loss would only be under $500 rather than a few thousand. I did consider renting a flugelhorn, however no one had one available in my area.
My choice was the Allora AAFG 103F flugelhorn. It has a nice mellow tone and stays in tune quite well. It's a nice looking horn which came with a cheap case and a stock mouth piece. I first ordered it thru MusiciansFriend on October 27, 2014 and received it November 2, 2014. I was pretty excited and had been anticipating the short wait. Prior to my order, I had been practicing buzzing on a trumpet mouthpiece which was given to me many years ago in music college.
After taking the horn out of the box and case, I began blowing on it and to my surprise, a nice tone came out of it for the first time use. Earlier I had been relearning some fingerings for the horn and began playing a scale...the C scale. To my surprise, I was able to play a whole octave without too much difficulty. Going beyond that was a bit more challenging but I've never turned down a challenge before so I'm not about to now.
In the next few days, after going out to get some valve oil and grease, oiling the valves and greasing up the tuning slides, I noticed that the third valve tuning slide wasn't working properly. I notified Musician's Friend and after several e-mails later they had me take it to a repair shop for analysis. The horn was defective. The tubes were not aligned properly which made the valve stick rather than sliding back to the original position as it was supposed to after releasing the trigger. I got back to Musician's Friend and told them that because it has a lacquer finish, trying to repair the tubes would damage it. I was told to send it back and did. I didn't get too much hassle from them but rather than just sending me a new horn, I had to re-purchase one.
It took about a week before I was refunded my money. Since black Friday was just around the corner, I decided to wait to see if I could save a few more $$$ in case there was going to be a discount on the item. During the Thanksgiving week I kept my eyes open on a couple of sites and decided that the first one with a decent sale was going to get my business. WoodwindsBrass.com came out with a coupon for 15% off on the item so I tried purchasing it. Unfortunately, they were having problems and I just couldn't make the purchase. Thanksgiving day, I noticed that MusiciansFriend.com also had a 15% discount for the Thursday and Friday for the item and decided to give them another try. I saved another $75 on the horn which I will put towards a decent mouthpiece. Getting any information regarding a mouthpiece for the horn from Musician'sFriend or even WoodwindBrass.com was futile as even the supposed experts had no clue. The Allora AAFG 103F flugelhorn uses a flugelhorn mouthpiece with the large Morse taper. The way I found that out was when I took the horn to the repair shop. The shop had several Bach mouthpieces on site and since I was looking to purchase one, I thought that I'd see if one fit the horn. Unfortunately, the Bach mouthpieces uses the small Morse taper so it was way too loose. Tomorrow, I will receive my replacement horn....it'll be interesting to see if everything works considering no one there bothers to check to see if the horn actually works by moving the slides, trigger valve and the tuning valves.
Update: Dec. 2, 2014
Received my replacement flugelhorn about 2 hours ago. Haven't had a chance to play it yet but things seem to be working fine, even the trigger however, I won't know for sure until I actually play it. This one had a cleaning rag and white gloves which my original didn't have. It came with the same stock mouthpiece which is somewhat useless in the upper register. The case is very cheaply made with plastic...bendable plastic. But the horn is surrounded with foam which is covered by some cheap black cloth. There is one slot for mouthpiece, no storage of any kind, nor was there any valve oil or grease for the tuning valves. A decent gig bag or a wooden case is a must in the near future.
Update December 3, 2014
Finally had a chance to blow into my flugelhorn only to find out that it didn't play. After some investigation, I find that the valves are stamped 1-3-3 instead of 1-2-3. Once again no quality control at Allora. I'm having to send it back to Musician's Friend. This horn is proving to be a piece of junk and not worth the money I spent on it.
More on the Allora AAFG 103F Flugelhorn
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