Peter Pickett

[bloke]

Super nice guy. Makes mouthpieces, and has purchased the Blackburn tooling and line of trumpets. Lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
I have a scheduled road trip passing near there, and a friend of mine has a genuine (not Kanstul) French Besson MEHA trumpet that's in remarkably good condition, particularly now that I've replaced the mouth pipe tube. The only thing is that the so-called (and I hate this wrong word) "compression" isn't very good. I've done a suck test on the tubes heading into the pistons, and they actually grabbed a hold of my lip pretty aggressively, so I'm suspecting that - sometime in the past - someone did some hillbilly repairs on the 1st and 3rd tune-on-the-fly slides and they are what are loose and leaky. I'm going to test them to make sure that my hypothesis is correct, but - if it is - I'm going to borrow that instrument back from my customer and stop by to see Mr Pickett and find out if he might have some outside slide tubing that fits really nicely over this French-made instrument's inside slide tubing, so I can rebuild the first and third slides and bring this instrument up to it's full potential prior to sending it off to be plated. Wish my customer luck. As far as making slide tubing in my shop, I've never taught myself to do it. I can make some tapered pieces using some of my tapered rods and then fill and bend them, but as far as precision perfectly smooth slide tubing, no, I've never developed that skill and nor do I have an expensive drawing machine which draws tubing out like that.

[arpthark]

Oh, man. You'll be in my old neighborhood, or thereabouts.

Pickett had pretty much set up shop after I moved away so I missed out a bit, but a lot of old acquaintances and friends used to work for him.

I'm sure you'll turn your nose up being a Memphian, but if Blue Door Smokehouse is open while you're in town, you'd better stop by. Best BBQ I've had in KY and it's literally a two minute walk down the street.

Sincerely,

Displaced Kentuckian

P.S.: there's also a King sousaphone (looks like a 1250?) that's been lurking on the Lexington, KY FB Marketplace for $1,000 for several months now. I bet they'd take an offer on it.

[bloke]

I've tried foreign BBQ here and there, and most has been pretty good.
Texas smoked brisket is usually pretty good (particularly when prepared in Texas), but it's just not barbecue.