CANNOT get the brass sound

I'm a bone player too, although my music tends to classical and jazz. If I were tryingto record that brassy strident sound, I'd stay right on the mike, play strong to get that edgy sound, and set the levels from that. Get the sound you want out of the horn first. Wide diaphragm mike might help,but I'm not sure. I use a wide diaphragm mike for my playing, but I'm trying for warm and open. If you want tohear some of my examples, I have a soundcloud page. Give me a shout.

What mic are you using?  Most dynamic mics will not cut it if you need brightness.  The strident, trashy sound comes from playing on axis with a mic than can capture those higher frequencies.  Of course, a little eq to compensate can help if you are stuck.  

I gave another shot and a few things came to my realisation:
 
1) The equipment (instrument, mouthpiece) and playing style I use is HUGELY important in the final product. I switched my second part trombone to a smaller instrument with smaller mouthpiece, and achieved a much brighter sound there.
 
2) The recording equipment I use changes everything. Plus, the mic distance. I switched from my Co9 (sort of SM58 clone) to my MXL 990 condensor, and instantly got a much brighter sound. The only part I left alone was first trombone, which needed a little of EQ to make it more of a "lower trumpet" sound.
 
3) My arrangment didn't lend itself as well to bright sounds. I decided to re-track everything today, and I recorded trumpet parts first. It was last night that I discovered that the REAL brightness and sharp bite is in the trumpet parts.
 
4) I had placed a reverb in place BEFORE the instrumental reverb, so the brass sound was already pushed too far back in the mix. I got rid of that and instead ran all the brass through one bus with a little EQ to brighten, then added a send with a heavy compressor, a distortion plugin and a stereo widener to get a little more bite behind (and around) the core sound. Works great!
 
 
I'd have to say I learned a lot in the past 12 or 24 hours about recording brass. Thanks for the tips, guys... I probably won't be recording brass with the Co9 very much anymore. Guess I'll also have to re-work my arrangements so that they lean towards the sound I want.