Posted by Joe S. on October 12, 1999 at 19:46:25:
In Reply to: Switching from F to F posted by Dan on October 12, 1999 at 15:39:41:
Here is my blind opinion, for whatever it is worth. (I haven't heard you play on either the Yamaha nor the "mystery" F.):
Your INSTRUMENT is the device that translates your best efforts of communicating your music to the rest of us. Whether a purchase of an instrument was done in haste, with ill advice, or whether it was done with a lot of analysis and forethought, if you find a CLEARLY BETTER tuba for you, can afford it, and it is IMPORTANT ENOUGH to you, you should GET IT (don't you think?).
I don't know how serious you are about your playing. I assume that you are fairly serious. Here are some observations that I made about a friend of mine named Jon, who plays the bassoon: When he lived here, he kept buying another bassoon and another (selling the last one), customizing each one to suit him, and getting used to them, even when to him they only seemed 1% better than whatever his current bassoon was. I wondered if he was fickle, or if he was just trying to turn a profit on bassoons, but I could tell that he was dead serious about each bassoon that he acquired, and I knew that he was the best bassoonist that I had ever heard, in spite of the fact that he was only playing in the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. He has progressed through a couple of other jobs (and bassoons), and is now the Principal Bassoonist in the Cleveland Orchestra and teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
Describing the Yamaha, you use phrases like "meet my needs", "within my budget", "learn the quirks", and "[better than what I had in certain aspects]"<(very, very loosely paraphrased).
When describing the LATEST find, you use the phrases "like the sound better", "really caught my attention", "feels better...and brighter".
Music involves emotion and excitement. Which descriptive phrases above sound more exciting to you? Your teacher is you advisor, but not your boss. You are hiring your teacher to give you advice. Sometimes, you need to decide whether to take all of the advice that you pay for.
I, of course, cannot evaluate from here how good you are at decision-making, nor whether your abilities are at a sufficient level to correctly judge equipment that is best for you.
Personally, I have consistantly "dumped" tubas that proved inferior to other ones that I encountered later. I think that one of the tubas that I have now (my F) will be impossible to beat, but I am still open to change.
The most important qualifier of this advice is the sentence above which begins, "I, of course, cannot evaluate from here..."