Trumpet Cases

Most young Trumpet players will start on a trumpet that comes from either a music store or a music room at their school. It will come with a mouthpiece and a case. You need all three. The case might not be necessary if there was never going to be anyone else near your Trumpet or if you were never going to take it anywhere but that’s just unrealistic. The job of the case is to protect the Trumpet and its mouthpiece. Any other uses are secondary.

It’s likely that the case will also contain a few useful items like valve oil, slide grease, a mouthpiece brush, maybe even a cleaning snake. Some cases have room for a mute or two, some cases have room for another Trumpet, or your lunch or whatever. Any time you put something other than your Trumpet in that case you have to consider what it might do to your instrument if it gets loose in there. That includes your mouthpiece. A loose mouthpiece can easily dent your horn. Sometimes those dents are minor and sometimes they can slow or stop your valves. That’s not damage your band teacher can fix, it’s a visit to the repair shop.

If you’ve been given a Trumpet at school and the mouthpiece won’t stay in its place – do something about it. Your teacher might have another case available or a better solution. If not, find a way to store that thing without it flying around. Most of the time cases like that are made with styrofoam guts and can’t really be fixed effectively. Maybe wrap the mouthpiece in a dish cloth or an old, not-too-stinky sock and see if that does it. Figure it out.

Every company had its own style of case so a comprehensive list of what’s out there is impossible. In general the are hard cases and soft cases (gig bags). Both exist in a great variety of shapes, sizes, materials, qualities and prices. If you’re buying a Trumpet and don’t like the case it’s in the best time to see if you can swap it for one you do like is when you’re making the deal. Some stores are ok with swapping and some aren’t. My tiny piccolo Trumpet came in a huge plywood triple/quadruple Benge case with no surcharge – those were great days. Hey, there it is!

It weighs a ton but is really tough – even with the greasy duct tape repairs. Clearly, it’s too big for that picc, but It can be great if I need a couple of Trumpets, a bunch of stuff and more security than my large soft case offers. It’s at or near one end of the spectrum.

At the opposite end is probably this leather gig bag. What it offers in convenience it sacrifices in its prime directive – the protection of the Trumpet that’s in it. Once it mysteriously “fell” from its perch atop a stack of speakers at a New Years’ Eve gig rehearsal giving my old Strad an unwanted Dizzy Gillespie make-over. Fortunately the leader of that funk band was a talented repair technician and fixed it before the show. My bad. I brought a knife to a gun fight. Twenty years and thousand of uses later a clip on its strap failed as I was walking and resulted in only minor damage – still, not great and also my fault for trusting a clip I’d begun to suspect. I still use it sometimes – like today – I can’t help it. Gig bags are cool. That’s their superpower.

That Stomvi gig bag has a little side pouch to hold various items – it’s just too small for a mute. It came with a thin plywood reinforcement to prevent the bell from getting crushed. That feature works! The Trumpet is free to wander around in there, but the price was right. The zipper is starting to fail after about 30 years so I buckle an old leather belt around it for safety now.

If you don’t care about the price there are definitely some premium options out there. This is the gig bag that might come with your Monette Trumpet:

It has a nicely formed padded nest for the horn with a plush cover and a side pouch for stuff. This one is actually for a Monette Flumpet – but that’s another story. If you’ve never heard of that brand name (or that instrument) and you’re not feeling rich, don’t upset yourself by searching it.

The next closest thing to a gig bag that offers better protection is something like this little hard case below. It has a molded interior that fits a Bb Trumpet, a mouthpiece and a couple of extras. I usually only take valve oil in it. It hides in a little groove under the 3rd valve slide. If you have enough other stuff to take with you then you could put it all in some other bag and keep the treasure in a case like this:

It has D-rings for a strap. It might have come with one but they’re long gone. I sometimes bungee this little passenger onto a motorcycle seat in the faint hope that it would survive an “incident”. I almost wish that all student Trumpets came in something like this. {BREAKING NEWS — I lent my Bach Bb Trumpet to a friend last weekend and put it in this case. One thing led to another and it fell from the luggage rack to the floor of the tour bus – cue scary music -. Both the case and my nearly new Bach were undamaged. Hmmm.

There is a Yamaha Trumpet case that’s very much like the SKB above but they used to reserve it for their cheapest model. Go figure. (Some of those Trumpets are now 40 years old and could be in rough shape if they’ve been ridden hard. Their cases are likely fine unless the horn was put away wet.You might find one for cheap, make a lamp out of the horn and use its case! Hmmm.) Here’s one I came across this morning at t he local high school – where Annie’s parents bought it for her in the late 80’s I think. They donated it to the school when she stopped playing it- love it! (the donation, not the stopping).

Most student Trumpets seem to come in cases like this:

or like this:

I’m pretty sure that Yamaha makes its own cases. The way they work there’s probably a big Yamaha case factory just down the street from their Trumpet factory. Most of their student instruments come either in a small case or a somewhat larger one with room for mutes etc. Their pro horns can come in very nice, plush, fitted hard cases or something like the drop-in double case that came with one of my little Trumpets. They’re consistently well made. The older student models were susceptible to having them mouthpiece holder get so loose that it didn’t really hold the mouthpiece and more. That’s almost always deliberate damage so It’s hard to hold Yamaha responsible for it.

Some of these cases have little or no room for mutes etc, but it’s usually the “et cetera” that get us in trouble. First it’s a mute, then it’s your lunch and a change of socks, and maybe your homework and before long you are squashing the case closed and suddenly your second valve doesn’t work. That’s because you pushed on its slide so hard that it bent the valve casing. NEVER put your music on top of the Trumpet in the case and then force it shut. You might see other people do things like that … if all the other kids were jumping off a cliff…?

If you need a case and don’t want to break the piggy bank try a music shop that rents instruments and see if they have any of these student cases leftover from an instrument they’ve taken out of circulation. Next up on the good value list would probably be a reasonably priced gig bag. Hard cases generally come “free” with a new Trumpet but trying to buy a new one is surprisingly expensive. You might get better value buying a pawn shop beater Trumpet and using its case.

If you’re buying a new Trumpet you might be able to negotiate on its case. That will depend on where you’re shopping You might not have a choice no matter what price range you’re in. Stores that sell a lot of Trumpets tend to be more flexible on this point because they also sell cases. It’s a question worth asking.

Most Intermediate and professional Trumpets come in good cases.These Bach Trumpet cases span almost 50 years and are in pretty good shape.

There is a lively business in making fancy cases for professional musicians on all instruments. These can seem as expensive as an instrument. Here’s a nice backpack “triple” case that easily holds a couple of big Trumpets and a bunch of gear. Audrey travels with this Gard case. Here she is arriving from the airport at tonight’s rehearsal.

That oversize music envelope isn’t as classy as its surroundings.

My Reunion Blues “daily driver” case holds a similar amount of stuff. It lacks the strap setup but it works for me. I rarely have to walk a long way with it, so I don’t miss the straps. I agonized over whether to get it in leather or this fabric but decided on the lighter fabric version. It occasionally gets strapped on the back of my motorcycle seat and I thought the leather wouldn’t like getting soaked in the rain. It happens. I tend to put too much stuff in the outside pouches and the zipper has begun to blow out in protest. Today I took out the spare valve oil, some tubes of grease, the Band-Aids, the gut pills, some snacks, a dozen pencils, some programmes and an old mouthpiece or two. The zipper seems happier. What did I say about “stuff”?

The shoulder strap is nice if you’re going a ways and have some other things to carry. It is really deep – kinda looks like a pet carrier. My Flügelhorn drops neatly into the middle slot. This case usually goes to the symphony with a Bb and a C Trumpet in it – plus some stuff. It can carry 3 horns but 2 of them have to be small. Bb, D and piccolo will snuggle safely together. I’ve learned not to put mutes on top of horns. Ugh. Oh yeah, the handle is some kind of foam and fabric combo that makes it really easy to carry. It’s soft and squishy like angel food cake!

Ok, I just have to show you this one. Nobody else in the world has this case – just me – and it’s not for sale. I rarely take days off from Trumpet playing but I do like to travel, often on a motorcycle. Those conflicting facets of my life resulted in what I’ve often told young Trumpet players is a stupid purchase: a “pocket Trumpet”. These things have been around for decades and are studies in compromise. I never perform on one but they store pretty well in luggage. The one I have came in a surprisingly stout case that wouldn’t fit into my bike’s sweet but hard side bags. I stopped in at a roadside “Leathers” shop and met a gifted leatherworker who said she loved a challenge. I left the offending instrument with her and she came up with a solution. It’s a fur-lined leather satchel complete with mouthpiece holder. It goes in the side bag with a pair of jeans and a towel around it and has never let me down. Feel free to send the photo to your friendly neighbourhood leatherworker!

OOPS! I almost forgot one of my favourite cases. I spotted this beauty in a Salvation Army thrift store in the late 70’s. The Trumpet inside was in 17 pieces and I paid one dollar per piece for it. It’s the old Wohlrab with an internal 2nd valve slide. I was a student at the time and $17 would have bought at least 5 Happy Meals but I had to have it. I should have thrown the case out a few decades ago but it still makes me smile. The mouthpiece holder is its only real weakness.

Check out the absence of a second valve slide on this beauty! I think there’s a photo of the “internal slide” on this other post.