Another Brasswind Diary


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Posted by Anthony Labelle on July 14, 2001 at 23:40:32:

On the way back from my now annual trip to visit my parents in Tennessee, I made a point of stopping at the Brasswind(which, despite only adding about 2 hours of road time, somehow added about 10 hours to my trip :~) . The trend nowadays after a trip to a tuba candy-store is to post a long-winded account of it… well, I'm not one to break tradition, so here it is:

(keep in mind that I'm no professional… just an average college student who enjoys an occasional romp in $2,000,000 worth of tubas. Take my observations for what they're worth.)

The horn I was mostly interested in was the Rudy Piston(CCC) tuba.. after having heard so much about it from others who have tried it, and a couple of people who currently own one, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Well… I don't know if it was that immense anticipation, or the fact that I hadn't played in almost 3 weeks(vacation!), but I was at first pretty disappointed with horn… fortunately for me, though, I had brought along my MD Recorder and mic, and recorded all day. The sound on this horn is INCREDIBLE!! It had a few stuffy notes in the lower register, and wasn't by any means a "perfect" horn, but upon listening to the recording in my truck after the store closed, I was absolutely certain that the amazing tone of this horn makes up for any of it's miniscule shortcomings. I played it some more throughout the day, and I got to like it more and more… looking at the other option of a 4/4 horn at that price(Read: Conn), you definitely can't go wrong with the Rudy.

Not wanting to spend too much time on one horn, I decided to check out a few others. The next horn I picked up was the Getzen G-50… I had seen this horn at Conferences and concerts several times, but it's price tag was always a perfect antidote for my desire to try it out… well this time I gave in, and took it out for a few honks… immediately it became(in my humble opinion) the best CC tuba I've ever played… all the notes just seemed to pop out of it, and despite being a small horn, it had a very nice low register… definitely nice than any .689" bore horn I've played, and seemingly nicer than that of a lot of larger horns I've played(including that notorious .840" bore BBb we're all familiar with). I'm beginning to think that bore size isn't really at all indicative of sound characteristics… at least not as much as a lot of people would seem to imply. Final opinion on the Getzen: GREAT HORN. Probably the perfect quintet horn/solo CC horn, though I don't know how well it'd work in a large ensemble situation… if my current desire wasn't for a large-ish CC tuba, I'd have absolutely no second thoughts about purchasing this horn.(though I probably would try to find it used, first)

2 other 4/4 CC's I tried were the Yamaha 822, and the Meinl 37(?). Both were "on display" outside of the tuba room. I only played the Yamaha for about 3 minutes… it sounded great from F at the bottom of the staff up to… 2nd line Bb, maybe. It *is* a relatively free blowing horn, but I found the sound so "dry" that I could never justify spending so much on it… which is odd, because I REALLY like the Yamaha 861 rotary horn which I'm currently "borrowing".

The Meinl 37 I liked a lot… sounded like a Meinl, felt like a Meinl, played like a Meinl… not much else I can say. I'd put the horn on the small side of 4/4… one thing that stood out a lot about this horn was the extremely small valve stroke… where I'm used to about an inch or more, the valve stroke on this horn couldn't have been more than a centimeter and a half. I don't know the exact price, but assuming it's in the under-5k, I'd certainly recommend this horn over the other popular German horns in that price range(Read: Miraphone)… especially for students.

Moving along, I wanted to try out the Meinl Weston 21X5 horns… there was a 2155 in the Showroom, and Mike brought out a 2145 from the back for me to try out. After a while on the 2145, I didn't find anything really outstanding about it that would compel me to recommend it to anyone else, but at the same time, it's by no means a "bad" horn. The 2155 on the other hand, I liked a bit more. Playing characteristics seemed not a lot unlike those of the 2145, it just produced more sound.

Running out of time, I thumbed through the brasswind catalogue to see if there was anything else I wanted to try out… the Mel Culbertson caught my eye, so I thought what the heck. I grabbed the horn, and sat down for a few toots. The effort-to-sound-output ratio on this horn has to have been the lowest of any mass produced (large)horn I've ever played! After a few minutes on this horn, I was liking it as much as I liked the Getzen. It didn't feel like a "big horn" at all in the high register, but did sound like a big horn in the low register. Unfortunately, when I set the recorder before playing the Mel Culbertson, I had forgotten to set the MD-LP mode, so I ran out of space on the disc before I finished playing my recording material… from the bit of recording I did get of it, though(about 2 minutes of the Jager concerto), the larger sound production is evident by the amount of distortion on the disc.

I tried the few remaining CC tubas, but didn't really notice anything about them that I haven't read dozens of times on this board… tried a couple of BBb's, but don't remember whichn's, as well as the Besson 982 EEb, which I hadn't tried before, but do like a bit better than the Besson 981, which I'm relatively well acquainted with. I don't have any experience with F tubas, but decided to try a few anyways. The Wilson 3200 is BIG, plays nicely, but is expensive. I liked the Meinl 182 quite a bit… it's not like any other tuba I've ever played, but IS like a few Euphoniums I've played :~) My favourite of the 5 or so that I tried out was the Miraphone 182… it had a "feel" that I'm more comfortable with.. I unfortunately didn't record any of my dabbling with the F tubas, so I don't really have any comments on their sound.


Anyhoo, in the end, I'm absolutely in love with the Getzen G-50, as well as the VMI Neptune(Mel Culbertson) horn… unfortunately they're pretty much complete opposites, and I don't anticipate being able to afford both in the next couple of decades, so I'll have to spend the next few months evaluating my needs(and hoping that this new Besson CC will be a happy median). Thinking about that makes me want to write another post, which is probably already located directly above this one on the BBS!

My $.02, and hopefully you found at least a shilling of worthwhile information in there.

Anthony Labelle
Superior, Wisconsin



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