Ultrasonic Cleaner

[Jimbosan]

I picked up two vintage trumpets last fall, a 1945 Martin Committee and a 1942 Buescher True Tone 205. They came out surprisingly clean with just Dawn except for some calcium deposits in the slides. That gave me an excuse to buy a 2.5L Ultrasonic Cleaner from Harbor Freight. My goal was to clean the slides just enough to remove the deposits without being over aggressive. Here are hints on how to an Ultrasonic Cleaner.

1. Put the parts and your cleaning solution in Ziplock bags. I used sandwich bags to clean a full set of slides, and snack bags for smaller items. You will use much less solution and don’t have to clean the Ultrasonic unit afterwards if you use Ziplock bags. Vibrations go right through the bag.
2. Use warm water to fill the Ultrasonic Unit and warm water to dilute the cleaning agent. Do not use the Ultrasonic Cleaners heater. You can overheat your pieces.
3. I used CRL, diluted 12:1. Apparently, there are different varieties of CLR. My bottle lists Lactic Acid, Gluconic Acid, and Lauramine Oxide as components. It has a pH of 2.1 - 2.3, undiluted, which is the same as Lemon juice. (The bottle says CLR is not recommended for use on brass, copper, or aluminum.)
4. The unit has preset times of 90, 180, 280, 380, or 480, seconds, but you can stop a cycle at any time. I started with 180 seconds, and inspected each piece at 90 seconds increments after that. Some of the pieces were clean enough after 270 seconds. Others took a little longer. The slides were not as shiny as they would have been from a cleaning by a horn tech, but the deposits were gone. And that was my goal. It was easy to control how aggressive I wanted to clean, by the strength of the solution, and the length of time in the Ultrasonic tank.
5. I flushed the slides with a solution of baking powder and cleaned them with Dawn so I didn’t leave any residual cleaning agent on the brass.
6. I removed a deposit in a leadpipe manually with the dilute CLR and a snake.
7. I used Dawn dish soap and warm water to clean 4 sets of bottom valve caps in a snack bag at one shot. One 180 second cycle did the job.
8. I clean my valves by hand, and I only use Dawn.

Summary. A 2.5L unit is just the right size for valves, slides, and mouthpieces and the Harbor Freight Ultrasonic Cleaner does the job. You can clean a lot of parts at a time and control how aggressive you want to be. But if you only have one or two horns, you can just clean them manually and save the money. If you have as many horns as I do and want another toy, go for it.


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Kanstul FBClassic bflat&C
'42 Buescher205
'45 Committee
'47 Holton48
'47 Conn22b
'48 Benge
'69 Olds Custom Crafted
'78 Getzen Eterna
'64 Bach Strad Cornet
'62 Olds Spl Cornet
'64 Conn 80a
'54 Conn 34a
Benge flugel
Olds,DEG Bugles