The main problem I ran into was figuring out the correct open bugle length and trimming the slides down. It's a lot of work; Back and forth between the grinder, de-burrer, grinder, pipe cutter, grinder de-burrer ... and so on until I had reached a main tuning slide length of about 7 inches on each end. This put me into about a sharp Ab (A flat).
A little more cutting on some of the straight tubing between the valve section and the leadpipe brought me to a couple inches of Bb. Took some of my left over tubing and spliced it into a section of longer tubing, replacing it, and I came to Bb with the tuning slide pulled out about an inch.
I was worried that the small bore of the trumpet section would hinder the airflow and somehow make for a stuffy or pinched sound. The way it was setup with the trumpet lengths, yes, it was incredibly stuffy. Found a couple other King 600 blocks with parts of tubing on them and proceeded to measure the ~13" I needed for the first valve slide loop.
Silly me! In the process of soldering the first valve tubing, I placed it on the third valve and convinced myself that I was right. Of course once I tried tuning it to the ~19" that the third valve should be, I discovered my error... so now I had first valve in third valve - in tune, but wrong side of the valve block.
Anyway, had some trouble removing the ferrule on the first valve, so I soldered an inner slide from the second valve and then soldered on the outer slides from the third valve (which came from I think the leadpipe main slide outer slides). Still need to address the total removable slide length, as I have to take off the outer slides from the crook, then solder them to the first valve crook.
As for the second and third valve slides, I might make a double slide for the second valve to keep the side width the same, and leave some room for my hands, and for the third valve I might have a slide within a slide - sort of an extension - as I'm using whatever tubing is available from the parts bin.
With a 12D trombone mouthpiece it sounds a bit like a trombone, but with the Conn mouthpiece that was included with the G/F bugle, it sounds a bit more like trumpet. If I could find an actual bass trumpet mouthpiece, and maybe an actual leadpipe/main-tuning-slide, it might sound better. For my purposes, it should work fine. Still a little wary on valve combinations... If the leadpipe was a little smaller, yet still accepted a larger mouthpiece shank, the tuning and sound might be better off. I considered using a trumpet leadpipe, but wanted a larger mouthpiece - I guess I could always turn down the shank on one of the trombone mouthpiece or maybe cut the leadpipe (!!!!) to the smaller diameter - we'll see how it all works once I've added the bracing and whatnot.
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