Posted by Rick Denney on February 24, 2000 at 03:32:01:
In Reply to: Re: Re: CC or BBb??? posted by Joe S. on February 24, 2000 at 01:11:13:
One wonders also if the difference we heard is because of the tone concept of the player more than the sound of the horn.
The loudest I have ever played without getting in trouble (besides, of course, the closing bars of 'Inna-gadda-da-polka') was in the first few measures of Poulenc's Gloria, in which I played at a church in Austin. I had to push to balance even a chamber orchestra, because the brass section consisted mostly of pros hired sit in and fill out the sound. Trying to balance the monster sound of the trombonist was killing me, and I looked to my left to see what he looked like. To my shock, Donald Knaub looked back, gave me an (undeserved) encouraging thumbs-up, and I promptly soiled my shorts. I *never* had to make *that* kind of a sound in a band.
I once played around on a friend's 186 CC. I was curious, and as the owner of a 186 BBb, thought the differences might be solely because of that two feet of tubing. I totally agree with Joe--for whatever reason, the C seemed to move around with a bit more zip. The BBb was a bit less "present," or perhaps a bit less "focused," if thosed descriptions do anything for you. It is true that the two instruments have different volume, given that some of that two feet is taken out of the outer branches. If the tubing was removed in the narrow tubing immediately downstream from the valves, the volume would have been closer to the same. Perhaps two horns with similar volume would not seem so different.