Yesterday while I was warming up, I noticed my tone with 1-2 fingering for concert 'G' on the staff was stuffy sounding compared to 3rd valve (I normally use 3rd valve on my M5050 as it's better in tune). During warmups when the horn is cold, I use various fingerings. Then I noticed any note with first valve didn't sound just right. To make a long story short, I found a big glop of grease in the 1st valve path above the slide leg. After removing this glop of grease, the horn sounded fine again. Today I cleaned out the entire horn with the QHR (Quick Horn Rinse with sudser). Instead of Dawn dish washing detergent, this time I used Lestoil. Lestoil is a great soap concentrate for cutting grease and I use it around the house quite a bit. Being diluted using the QHR it worked well (of course careful to rinse thoroughly). Wow! - what a bunch of old grease I got out my horn.
About six months ago I switched to Hetman-8 heavy grease from using Heman-7. Since no. 8 is thicker it lasted longer and slides stayed in place. Not sure if it's the grease itself causing the problem or the way I've been applying it. About 12 years ago an excellent brass-repair tech at "Brass n' Reed" in Daytona Beach showed me how he greases slides. He'd run a bead along the male leg of the slide then insert and twist - back and forth until it spread out evenly inside the female leg... repeating the process until you didn't hear any metal to metal sounds. This way worked for me for years when I used other greases. But maybe Hetman-8 globs up too much? Not sure. After cleaning out my 5050, I cleaned out my Yamaha 641 (which had the older grease in it still) and didn't get near as much grease and gunk out of that horn. I needed to clean the 641 anyway as I want to store it completely dry until my grandson is ready for it.
Anyone else have any trouble with the heavy grease?
I think for now I'll just go back to the older grease and see how it goes.