While finishing up that Laskey-Pinc trumpet from yesterday, I had all the tubes on the 3rd valve slide parallel and aligned with each other, but just couldn't get the slide to move smoothly. On a professional trumpet, that slide should move effortlessly with the slightest push or pull, and this is only achieved through perfect alignment of the slide tubes. I was stumped as to why it wouldn't behave, and I kept measuring spans and checking alignment, but everything I saw indicated that the tubes were parallel. Finally, in a bit of frustration, I moved one of the tubes slightly out of parallel. I pushed the upper tube on the instrument up a little bit, slightly increasing the span between it and the lower tube.
Eureka! The slide moved like butter. Better than butter, really, because butter isn't a really great trumpet lubricant. With a few more tweaks I had it moving beautifully. I don't fully understand why that solved it, and I believe my measurements were accurate in showing that the tubes were parallel when things just weren't working, but it's a tidbit I'll keep in mind the next time I'm aligning slides.
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