What can I do to change the pitch on a trumpet? I have made a lot of trumpet calls and they all seem to fall in the medium pitch range. None are really high or low pitch.
I was hunting in S. Texas last week and had two different gobblers slightly hang up on me while I was using a med. pitch slate call. I switched to a higher pitch ceramic call and they came on in. I tried using a med. pitch trumpet and got similiar results. I had several trumpets with me and they were all in the med. range.
I am going on a hunt next week and call for a new customer. I wanted to build a new, lower, pitch trumpet and take with me. This would give an other option.
What can I do to change the pitch? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Bill
I would like to correct previous post. I said a lower pitch call and I actually should have said higher pitch call.
Thanks for looking and any comments.
Bill
Make your mouthpiece hole smaller. You can also try adjusting the dimensions of your Bell end.
TRKYHTR
Start with the hole in the mouth piece
What they said
I am interested in this topic as well. I have been tinkering with making some trumpets here lately, & for the most part they all have the same pitch regardless of what kind of materials I use. I have been using a stepped hole in my mouthpiece going from 1/8 at the end of my trumpet body to 7/64 on the mouthpiece where it meets the trumpet body, then about half way up the mouthpiece switching over to 5/64. I can't imagine that you would want to go much smaller than that , as it seems it would start getting pretty hard to draw the air through it. Maybe try going with a longer mouthpiece and stepping the size down? Maybe I'll try that this week sometime & report back on that. What I've found to work best on the trumpets that I've made so far is using 4 steps in the barrel, then two in the mouthpiece, maybe the two is a little unconventional, but it works for me. I've tried to make some that were drilled out with 8 steps in the barrel and only one size in the mouthpiece, and they were so high pitched, they were squeaky sounding. If it seems as if I have hijacked this thread, I apologize, but this is a topic that interests me, as I have spent the last couple of months trying to develop some great sounding trumpet calls, so any information that I can receive and share on this subject that seems kind of taboo is greatly appreciated.
Quote from: cleanslate on April 12, 2012, 07:32:49 PM
I am interested in this topic as well. I have been tinkering with making some trumpets here lately, & for the most part they all have the same pitch regardless of what kind of materials I use. I have been using a stepped hole in my mouthpiece going from 1/8 at the end of my trumpet body to 7/64 on the mouthpiece where it meets the trumpet body, then about half way up the mouthpiece switching over to 5/64. I can't imagine that you would want to go much smaller than that , as it seems it would start getting pretty hard to draw the air through it. Maybe try going with a longer mouthpiece and stepping the size down? Maybe I'll try that this week sometime & report back on that. What I've found to work best on the trumpets that I've made so far is using 4 steps in the barrel, then two in the mouthpiece, maybe the two is a little unconventional, but it works for me. I've tried to make some that were drilled out with 8 steps in the barrel and only one size in the mouthpiece, and they were so high pitched, they were squeaky sounding. If it seems as if I have hijacked this thread, I apologize, but this is a topic that interests me, as I have spent the last couple of months trying to develop some great sounding trumpet calls, so any information that I can receive and share on this subject that seems kind of taboo is greatly appreciated.
The hole in my mouthpiece is .098" and my mouthpiece is 3 1/2" long. If I use a .090 or .09375 my sound gets high pitch. It does kee kee real good but too high pitch for me to yelp with.
TRKYHTR