My friend Jim McLaughlin asked me where I bought my current King 2B. I responded I got it horn from the "famous" Lee Norfleet, idiot savant horn repairman in Muskogee Oklahoma. His mom and dad ran a uniform store. He had a horn repair shop in the uniform store and horns laying all over the place. He talked trombone and had a 2B with a BAD slide. I told him I was interested. He said he would "build" a slide for me and charge me $250 when he got it finished. He was called "famous" because he auditioned for Maynard and got the bass bone call over several hundred other cats. When he found out the guys on the band, drank and smoked dope, he turned Maynard DOWN!
When I got back and picked the horn up to play it, a double E popped out of it like CAKE. On 99% of bones you can not PLAY a double E, even if you fish from 1st to 3rd. The response on the horn was incredible. Of course what I failed to realize was that my original
horn slide was so worn from a hundred gazillion miles of playing, that it had practically no compression and was like playing with the spit valve open.
He built the slide from SCRATCH! All new original King parts and the best MATCHED tubing you could use. He cut the lead pipe to a special length for reasons that only HE could understand, and then sweat soldered to the inside of the upper slide so no leaks and no corrosion! He also used REAL solder with LEAD in it of a very special grade, that you can't get any more because EPA made them talk it all out in the '80's. The bell looked blah. It had been buffed so many times there was no emblem showing - which made it VERY LIGHT and responsive. The horn had notes in it I had never played before, like a "Ghost in the Machine". I never touched the other horn after that. That would have been around 1994.
I had the special engraving and the factory lacquer job done in 2005 by the "Horn Shop" in Melbourne Florida, Mike Shlusser (?) bone man and MD for Elvis in Vegas, had all the right "contacts". It cost me $700. When I got the horn back I wanted to hang it in the Louvre. It was truly a work of ART! Bell still looks great with the new Cad Cam engraving of the original King 2B factory engraving ... but slide lacquer has turned.
Hell of a horn...............Steinmeyer almost crapped when he played it!
When I got back and picked the horn up to play it, a double E popped out of it like CAKE. On 99% of bones you can not PLAY a double E, even if you fish from 1st to 3rd. The response on the horn was incredible. Of course what I failed to realize was that my original
horn slide was so worn from a hundred gazillion miles of playing, that it had practically no compression and was like playing with the spit valve open.
He built the slide from SCRATCH! All new original King parts and the best MATCHED tubing you could use. He cut the lead pipe to a special length for reasons that only HE could understand, and then sweat soldered to the inside of the upper slide so no leaks and no corrosion! He also used REAL solder with LEAD in it of a very special grade, that you can't get any more because EPA made them talk it all out in the '80's. The bell looked blah. It had been buffed so many times there was no emblem showing - which made it VERY LIGHT and responsive. The horn had notes in it I had never played before, like a "Ghost in the Machine". I never touched the other horn after that. That would have been around 1994.
I had the special engraving and the factory lacquer job done in 2005 by the "Horn Shop" in Melbourne Florida, Mike Shlusser (?) bone man and MD for Elvis in Vegas, had all the right "contacts". It cost me $700. When I got the horn back I wanted to hang it in the Louvre. It was truly a work of ART! Bell still looks great with the new Cad Cam engraving of the original King 2B factory engraving ... but slide lacquer has turned.
Hell of a horn...............Steinmeyer almost crapped when he played it!