The Brass Upgrade Decision Kit
The BrassArtist kit for deciding between more practice, a service, a mouthpiece and a new horn, and pricing each one before you pay
BrassArtist's Instrument Value Calculator gives a rough resale figure for a horn, and its Maintenance Cost, Practice Time, Mouthpiece Size and Transposition calculators each answer one more question. None of them talks to the others, and the decision to upgrade lives in the gaps: is it the hours, the maintenance, the mouthpiece or really the horn, and what does a step up cost once the old horn is sold and the new one has aged a year? The Brass Upgrade Decision Kit puts the tools in the order a player meets them. Part 1 logs six weeks of practice before any money moves, prices a service against the value it adds (on the calculator's own $2,000, five-year-old horn, a Fair-to-Good service adds $180, so a $270 bill pays back by fixing the horn, not in resale) and runs one mouthpiece change at a time over a 7.5-hour trial. Part 2 separates a resale estimate, a trade-in offer and a replacement cost, prices keeping, servicing and stepping up for a whole year (an example $3,200 horn costs $2,552 in cash and $842.40 over year one, against $430 for the service), tests a horn in another key on your real folder, and ends in a blind, recorded trial and an insurance value that would actually replace the horn. The horn prices, service quote and selling cost are examples, rules of thumb are named as such, and every value is the calculator's rough estimate, never an appraisal, a quote or financial or insurance advice. Lip pain or numbness that lasts is a reason to see a doctor, not to buy a mouthpiece. Includes a practice and trial log, a horn ledger, a three-path worksheet, a blind-trial scorecard, reference tables, and a personalised sheet worked on your own numbers.
Look inside
Two full pages from the kit, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.
What is in it
- Six logged weeks on the horn you have, and what each symptom points at
- A service quote before a sales quote: when a service pays for itself in resale, and when it does not
- One mouthpiece change at a time, with a 7.5-hour trial against the old one
- Resale estimate, trade-in offer and replacement cost: three numbers, never swapped
- Keep, service or step up, each priced for a whole year, then per hour played
- A horn in another key: your folder mapped note by note and key by key
- A blind, recorded trial, a decision date, and insuring at replacement cost
- A practice and trial log, a horn ledger, a three-path worksheet and a blind-trial scorecard
- Resale by age and condition, transposition offsets, the formulas, and a quickstart
- A personalised sheet: your horn's three numbers, the service that pays, your upkeep, hours and trial
- ✓ 24 printable pages
- ✓ 10 sections, worksheets and templates
- ✓ A second PDF worked out from the numbers you enter
- ✓ No account needed, just an email address
- ✓ Instant download; link valid 7 days
Price includes any taxes. Sold by GrabURL, who handle checkout and support. The charge appears on your statement as GrabURL.
The kit picks up where the free Instrument Value Calculator leaves off. The calculator gives a rough resale figure; the kit puts it beside the practice-time, maintenance-cost, mouthpiece and transposition tools, in the order a player meets them: hours before hardware, a service before a sale, one mouthpiece change at a time, then the step up priced for a whole year, a horn in another key, a blind trial, and an insurance value that would actually replace the horn. A decision method, not an appraisal, a quote or financial advice.