Equipment

Several students ask me about the equipment I use. I believe equipment is a highly personal choice based on your anatomy/physiology, experience, and performance needs – so the items on the list below are not necessarily recommendations, but simply an answer to the question, “What equipment do you play?”

Trombones

Tenor

S.E. Shires Custom Trombones – I currently play 2 of their custom horns on a regular basis:

A .547″ bore horn, which I use for most orchestral and chamber music:

  • TII 7YM bell
  • TGX tuning slide
  • Dual-bore rotor valve
  • TB47 slide
  • #2 leadpipe
  • Greg Black custom mouthpiece

A .508″ bore horn, which is primarily used in commercial, jazz, and crossover settings, but it also works well in certain, lighter orchestral music:

  • S1YM 8″ bell
  • SY 1.5 tuning slide
  • T08 slide
  • #3 leadpipe
  • Greg Black 3C L mouthpiece

Bass

I have a Brasslab (Chuck McAlexander) conversion of a Bach “Corporation” 50 that has independent O.E. Thayer valves on it. I swapped out the original leadpipe for a Brass Ark MV50, and use a custom Greg Black mouthpiece on it.

Alto

I use a Yamaha YSL-871. I’ve tried a few different mouthpieces, but this is about the only situation where I’ve ever preferred the mouthpiece that comes with the horn – a Yamaha 48A!

Accessories

To see some of the accessories that I recommend for trombonists, check out my blog posts or the Practice Aids page.

Looking to buy a new instrument?

Head over to my blog post called Trombone Shopping for a few pieces of advice to get you on the right track.