The Schmid triple horn is a popular instrument, and with good reason.  They are securely in tune, thoughtfully engineered, and beautifully crafted.   And quite versatile: different tunings built in, a relatively light weight making it easy to hold while seated or standing, and the many interchangeable bell flares are among many features that make it possible to configure and re-configure the instrument's playing and sound characteristics.

I was quite fortunate to acquire one in the summer of 2006. Ever since, I've learned quite a bit about what is really possible on a triple horn.  It has served me very well in every imaginable playing scenario and genre, granting me many options for intonation and color.  Having been educated primarily on a Conn 8D, I had played other "brass horns" in the past and never felt very comfortable with airflow.  On the Schmid triple, I quickly became comfortable moving wind through the horn.  The valve system is spectacular, allowing for truly liquid slurs and great precision in rapid/virtuosic passages. 

After 3 years with the instrument, I began to feel like I had assimilated my technique to fit the horn; it began to feel natural.  In spite of this, I kept noticing a large discrepancy between the low f horn and the other two.  Initially, I felt like I might have been practicing a bit much in the upper registers to learn the high F fingerings, so I began by spending lots of quality time in the lower registers.  No matter how much I practiced, it did not feel as natural as the rest of the horn.  It did not feel natural compared to other horn's low f sides either. 

The next step would be to try some different bells- I had heard that the wider bell flares help the low and middle of these instruments.  I also moved away from American style mouthpieces.  However, after 6 different bells and a gaggle of mouthpieces, no combination really made the low f feel natural to me.  The low f never felt like a viable option for real life low horn duties.  In performance, I felt much more comfortable on the Bb/F, so I gravitated toward those fingerings, mostly abandoning the low f except  for stopped horn or only when specifically called for in performance.

Over time, the lack of regularly occurring low f horn began to have an undesirable effect on my embouchure structure.  It is, of course, quite possible to play on the Schmid triple with minimal or no low f horn use and have a perfectly fine embouchure structure with no problems.  There are excellent and accomplished players who do so with amazing results.  It just didn’t work for me.  For as much as I liked this instrument, I did not like feeling that the horn was “making” me settle for a set of fingerings, and no amount of specialized extra practicing or money spent on bells and mouthpieces ever made it possible for me to fully incorporate the low f into the real use of the entire instrument.  I have encountered other Schmid triple players who share my frustrations, so it became clear to me that different measures were needed to get my Schmid f/Bb/F triple horn the way I wanted it.  Armed with my wits, I set out on my quest to make this horn a more complete instrument fitting my playing needs with all options at my disposal.

    R&D: I began by drawing up some sketches to have another way of seeing and understanding how each brace affects the instrument's overall design, and to work out some possible solutions:

    On graph paper, I plotted a horizontal line to represent the journey of a vibration introduced to the tubes of the horn, and vertical slashes to represent the resistance created by each solder point.  I made charts like these for every valve combination, but the most helpful were the graphs of the open f/Bb/F horns:

These gave me a better overall idea about what could stay, what could go, and/or what could be added. 

Before visiting any repair shop, I decided it was prudent to be in overall good playing shape and well-maintained away from gigs and shows.  This would ensure that I could evaluate these changes from a place of relative consistency and stability, free from the trappings of gig chops, lazy air, etc.  I also stuck with the same mouthpiece and bell throughout the process.

I did the work in stages with at least a few weeks between to help me track the effects of these alterations.  I kept a journal, and have included some of my observations throughout the following pages.

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