Norwich Natural Trumpets

07/09/2026

Fixing a broken bandoneón wasn't on my bingo card for last Friday! (Mostly because I don't really do repairs at all! But if I do a repair, it's usually more trumpet shaped!)

Turns out I'd met the customer years ago when he played bassoon in a trumpet and organ recital I did. Now he's dabbling with this beast...

Problem was that one of the little springs connecting the buttons had broken. Managed to extract the broken fragments, measured up and looked in the spring master catalogue. Too many options and a bit much to read so a called them up. Bit of an argument with the lady on the phone where she was adamant I needed a compression spring and wouldn't listen to what I was telling her! It's an expansion spring but it doesn't have loops on the end. Me cutting the loops off was obviously sacrilegious 🤷

Realised I had some spring wire in the drawer so I just chucked it in the lathe and made one myself!! Pretty chuffed with this fiddly little spring, it's only 2.75mm OD, 0.35mm wire and only 6mm long! Made him a couple of spares while it was set up. Have to try and fit the soundboard back into it now 😳

05/09/2026

Not posted in ages! It's been a busy summer!
This one recently went off to David Burt in Portugal and is a collapso in D down to A and all brass.

This version of the collapso has 2 blocks, one for 440 and one for 415. He went with different cords for each which we also made in house!

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

We're usually busy bending parts ready for the next orders. These were filled with cerrobend, bent, cleaned up and prepped for polish and now the cerrobend is being melted out in hot water.

02/06/2026

The next trumpet has been ready to go for a couple of weeks but the customer has been away! It's all wrapped up in its new brass bags case and boxed up ready to get to Edinburgh on Friday.

This is an all brass short model, with extra loops in the back bows to bring the holes a bit closer and more comfortable. The customer took part in the baroque trumpet making course with Bob Barclay, Michael Munkwitz and Richard Seraphinoff and has been playing his copy of the 1632 Hainlein. He wanted to try something with holes and more keys/crooks than he made on the course as well as a later trumpet to hopefully make playing it a bit easier for later rep!

22/05/2026

The 2nd ho**er to go was this brass and nickel non-collapso (in a brass bags case) Eb,D,Db,C,Cb. They always look great in this burgundy cord. One of my favourite choices!
This one is also staying in the UK and went to Paul Martin over in Bedfordshire.

20/05/2026

Been mega busy recently. So much going on with orders, repairs, bells and parts for other makers etc!

This one went out about a month ago now! Collapso model in Eb,D,Db,C,Cb in brass with nickel mounts. It's got some homemade cord in dark green and ecru which I think looks really nice! -though I was skeptical at first!

This is the first of 3 UK orders we've been working on and was made for Brendan Musk. Looking forward to hearing what he does with it!

27/04/2026

Nice afternoon with Mateusz and his shiny new trumpet!

07/03/2026

I was asked to show and explain what's going on with the slide trumpet... So here you have it! I hate doing videos like this, way too awkward on camera for putting stuff like this out there 😂

Russell Gilmour has a great vid explaining the history of the slide trumpet and demonstrating his. Worth checking out!
I can post some pics of it taken apart if my explanation here isn't good enough!

I chose this short Pace to copy because it had a few benefits I could see:
-It's short so it fits in a gig bag and it's comfy to hold/has a nice balance to it.
-the compression spring requires the least maintenance and suffers fewer problems than other slide mechanisms. Clock-springs and elastic are more prone to breaking than a compression spring.
-Because it's double wrapped, it means the bell is longer than a regular long slide trumpet that usually either cuts some of the taper off to allow for the slide tubing, or it's a short bell taper.

Hope that's useful in answering some of the questions! Let me know if there's anything else you're interested in seeing 🤷

21/02/2026

Lovely morning catching up with Crispian, been a long time since I saw him last. Nice to have a look at all his trumpets and mouthpieces and have a geek-out! Got lots of great info and stories as well as being given an original Köhler mandrel!

He really liked my slide trumpet, very positive about it and loves how it plays. When I made it I was constantly back and forth on the phone to him about my ideas and what I wanted to make, so it's great for him to finally try it!