Expert: Kenton Scott - 12/8/2010

Question
I was looking for an inexpensive trumpet to start playing again. I got what I thought was a great deal. I paid $30 for a Carl Fisher Senator. It appears to be in good shape. Good valve response but to my shock it doesn't fit any of the mouthpieces I have. What's the story here?

Answer
Well, there are a couple of possibilities, but the most likely is that this horn was made before the modern sized trumpet mouthpiece became the standard.  The earlier trumpets had shorter mouthpiece with a different taper.  

So, you have a couple of choices for fixes.  One would be to find a vintage mouthpiece with the proper shank. A mouthpiece in the style intended for the horn, is a good choice because it would match up with the specs to which the horn was built, and is likely to have better intonation.

On the other hand, most players do not like the feel of the old style mouthpieces.  So, another option would be to take it to a repair service, and have them swap out the original receiver with a modern one.

But, unless you are planning on only practicing alone with the instrument, you may also want to check it out to make sure that the instrument is not a high pitch horn.  There were two standards back then.  High pitch was the older style, but low (modern i.e. A=440) was the new standard.  So, you probably want to make sure you can get it to tune to A=440.

It is possible to convert a high pitch horn to low pitch, but you may want do decide how much money you want to put into it.