Welcome to Gaia! ::

I had the same problem earlier last year. I hated my school horn and wanted to switch to something smaller, and we had the ancient beat up alexander horn in our basement, but its an alex horn, and it be stupid passing up having it. First time I played it, it was like love at first sight. Only problem was the horn was absolutely disgusting! It had been in our basement for 15 years, had survived two floodings, and was at least 60 years old. The first thing you have to do is take out all your valves and run soapy water through all of them, then run some warm water through the instrument itself. The water will not hurt the instrument (obviously because its brass and it has spit in it too) but make sure that you get all of the soap out and most of the water out. A few left over drops is fine in it because obviously it could be like spit. Also run a snake through the lead pipe of the horn, and that should get out any gunk thats stuck in the lead pipe. For your mouth piece, the black stuff might just be oxidation which is what happens when the metal gets old. What you should do for the mouth piece is wash it with soap in warm water. If its really bad you could boil it for a few minutes or put it in the dishwasher, but the only problem with that is you risk chipping the outside of your mouthpiece (which is extremely annoying to play with because you can feel the chip on your lips) Your horn will not look any different after you run water through it, but the chunks of mold will be gone (I still had a lot of green spots on my horn after giving it a bath because of the oxidation) If you have the money I would suggest getting it chemically cleaned too. However, if your horn has laquer on it then it will not get a full chemical bath, it will just be cleaned on the inside, because the chemicals will eat away the laquer. That will get rid of the oxidation spots (but they will come back after a few months but it won't be because the mold is dirty. If your horn has laquer on it (the stuff that makes it shiny) then you should not have any problems with oxidation. Your director or teacher should know of someone who does a good maintenance job. Then I would suggest to keep the slides clean, buy slide grease with lanolin in it, and NOT vasaline, because vasaline (cant spell) causes build up of dirt in the actual valves its self which can cause clicking. Also the lanolin keeps the valves from turning black so that way if you ever lean up against the valves you won't have to worry about staining your shirt.


Sorry this is so long! hope it helps!