Posted by Roger Lewis on March 03, 2004 at 07:21:10:
In Reply to: play testing posted by Kenneth Sloan on March 02, 2004 at 17:31:07:
I've been lucky enough to have evaluated many horns over the years and learned many sad lessons from this experience. I've found that when I inhale to start to play any horn, I hear the sound I am seeking to get from that instrument in the back of my head. When I exhale into the instrument and begin to play, my rule of thiumb is, if it doesn't come pretty close to what you hear in your head, put it down. Many people are looking for a "name" rather than a "sound" and this may add a lot of time to their search. If you want a name brand instrument, but it doesn't match the sound you hear in the back of your head, then you will wind up with a shelf full of mouthpieces that you go through tyring to get that horn to please your brain. I call this "chasing" a horn. You believe you have the magic horn and now you only need to find just the right mouthpiece to make it truly work for you. This is usually a fruitless effort.
I went through a 12 year love/hate relationship with my former F tuba. I loved the way it played, but I absolutly hated the sound of it. We were divorced when I finally found the sound in another horn. With it came a greater ease of playing and my regular mouthpieces worked on it quite nicely.
I've learned to trust my instincts on this when shopping and I haven't had a dilemma of selection since.
Just my observations.
Roger