YEP 201: Euphonium Stuffiness/ Air Leakage

[MusicSpark]

Hi Forum,

Its been a while since I have posted here, but I have been having a few problems with my euph. After I had cleaned out my instrument for the week, the next day my instrument started getting a stuffy/ leaky tone. I'm not sure if it was a problem with my slides. I often get my first and third valve tuning slides mixed up. After that I began to compensate for that by buzzing faster, tightening my embouchure and increase the volume of air put through the horn. Next another problem I have is that any note in the range shown below( I can only physically hit the e and with lots of struggling occasionally can hit the f or even the g.) gets really thin and stuffy in terms of tone quality. Is that an air support, embouchure, or horn problem?

Thanks in advance for your responses,

MusicSpark.

[John Lebens]

I play a Blessing 350 which is reported to be a US YEP 201 clone and have found that if the spit valve is open or leaking you will experience the problem that you posted.