Slingerland made a whole line of single-valve bugles, including a piccolo soprano. The ones I usually see are your garden variety single-valve sopranos and baritones (the old/small kind, not bass-baritones). I've seen a few piston-rotor bugles as well, but I don't think they lasted very long into th...

Trumpet players are - just now - beginning to RE-discover the (6/7-series) lightweight Schilke-esque trumpets that Yamaha made "back then". They are a bit more than just Schilke-esque - Schilke not only designed them but made many of them himself. As I understand it, the horns with an &qu...

bloke wrote: ↑Sun May 05, 2024 12:02 pm

Finetales wrote: ↑Sun May 05, 2024 9:19 am I currently own zero tubas, so...no.

Tromboners look for Bach/Olds 4-valve B-flat tubas and compensating E-flat tubas.

Oh I know...my last tuba was a Boosey compensating Eb. Would love to have another (with valves in better shape), but...they cost money, and all.

I currently own zero tubas, so...no.

I did briefly own an Olds S24G bass trombone. Had I had the time and play money to get a set of modern rotors and paddles/linkages put on, and the wraps redone, I might have kept it. Stock, those horrible valve levers put my hand in significant pain after 30 seconds of playing. I've never played a l...

Tubas and euphoniums specifically, none. The Boosey Eb compensator with the 15" bell was a sweet horn, but it badly needed a valve job and I wasn't in a place to do that. Plus I had a very small living space at the time, and a tuba I never used taking up a ton of that space was something I was ...

I remember liking the MW euph, I just liked the Kanstul more. Probably for the best I didn't know how low the MWs eventually dropped or I might have gone up there and grabbed a euph I don't need!

I almost got a Meinl-Weston euphonium (I believe it was the 451S, but might have been the 551) when I went to the brick-and-mortar Woodwind & Brasswind store in South Bend to pick out a euph years ago. I ended up going with a prototype Kanstul 975 instead. One beautiful Sterling Virtuoso later, ...

Mulcahy hasn't used a 321 with the CSO since 2001 at the latest. It does appear that he was using a 321 in this 1990 CSO concert , but every video or picture I've seen since has him on a 3+1 compensator (looks like a Willson to me), starting with the 2001 CSO brass Bud Herseth retirement concert (se...

One need only spend a day at Disneyland listening to the sousaphone players in the Disneyland Band pumping out rock-solid low Ebs, Ds, and Dbs that anchor the (very loud) band just as much as any other note to realize that a 4th valve on a sousaphone is entirely superfluous.

It's pretty simple: the goal is to find a setup that makes playing as easy (and therefore fun) as possible. Good equipment exists to make that happen. Brass instruments are tools...you wouldn't use a bad set of hand tools or power tools if you could help it, even if they could technically complete t...

I'm a freelancer, so I always owe a hefty amount at tax time.

A friend of mine was in one of those Air National Guard bands. She and her unit were given the option to move over to a local Army band, and many of them took that option. They have to go through Army basic training, but after that they will still be employed as military musicians, playing with the ...

It boggles my mind how Yamaha could make the euph 321 and Eb tuba 321 so good, but the Bb tuba 321 so awful.

The trombones don't have a WHOLE lot more to do than that. I played it in undergrad and it was pretty much just an "I get to listen to all these pretty flute solos" experience, not so much a playing one. There is also a La Mer by a less-known composer named Paul Gilson. That one gives the ...

Personally, I don't like the sound of either tuba or bass trombone in the average brass quintet (the exception being rep specifically written for bass trombone, like the ABQ stuff). Even an F tuba (or at least, the big Fs everyone is using these days) is too big for the group to my ears, while bass ...

I go through a lot of brass instruments. I currently own 29, but have sold 36 according to my spreadsheet. I generally operate under two rules: 1. Instruments are tools, not companions. As much as I've dabbled in collecting over the years, it's never stuck for very long. If I don't use it, I don't l...

Schiller/Jim Laabs is the worst place to buy a Chinese horn from...no quality control, no customer service, and the notoriously awful descriptions. Better to find the same model by another retailer. They're all the same model from the same factory, after all.

So, what horns did you want to buy? The two big ones were the PE523 large bore alto trombone and the large bore soprano trombone with F attachment. The alto was awesome. I tried one at a convention once and it was 90% as good as the amazing boutique altos, for a tiny fraction of the cost. They disc...

I like the mini-corps idea, but I also feel that it doesn't really need to have a competitive circuit like the big corps do. What I would rather see is more local mini-corps scenes in place of a national one. I feel like that would be a better fit for the more casual nature of those groups.