Posted by Rick Denney on December 25, 2002 at 14:13:15:
In Reply to: A Christmas wish for Holton . . . posted by P.C. on December 25, 2002 at 03:13:54:
I think you are being naive.
A fine Holton is a wonder to play. I've played three Holtons, including the one I just bought. Granted, the other two were conversions to CC. They did not have the magic that mine has. The same has been true of some other BAT's that I've played. Some had the magic and some didn't.
The last Holton BAT was made in the middle or early 70's. Those who were well-trained enough at that time to make them would surely be retired by now. You can't recreate those skills just with money--it takes time, measured in years, to redevelop them. Each time a batch of 345's were made, different hands did the making. That's probably a major part of the reason for the famous inconsistency.
Would BBb amateurs like me buy new ones? No. Even though there is little or no supply for new, great-playing BBb BAT's, there is also quite a small market. That market seems to be satisfied with 2xj's, 3xj's, and the occasional old Holton, as long as it's under half a kilobuck. I would not have driven to Baltimore last week had the price been set at $6000, and I don't know of anyone who has ordered a Gronitz (probably the next cheapest BBb BAT to the Holton). I wonder how many 3100's Willson sells, but I'd bet it is not many, and I'd bet the vast majority of those are institutional or European sales.
CC pros would buy them if they were top-notch. But they are too few to support the development of tooling and skills from scratch. If Getzen can't survive making their wonderful G-50's, which are versatile and a joy to play, how would an American manufacturer survive making a more limited-purpose BAT?
It is true that the market is already saturated with fine CC 6/4 tubas from a variety of manufacturers, for a cost that is competitive with what Leblanc would have to charge to make money. The alternative to the Holton for me was to order a Gronitz, which is an unknown but made by a shop with an excellent reputation, but which would have required a wait of many months and an investment of seven or eight grand. If that wasn't too much to pay, you'd have heard of people who had paid it.
We've seen the same request for UMI to start producing the 2xj or 3xj tubas, and they would be more apt to take it on than Leblanc. With a few fixes in the design, they might solve their problems of old. But the prices for used examples don't lead one to believe that new ones would be able to sell for nearly enough to finance the re-establishment of production.
Here's some potential heresy: The designers at neither York nor Holton really understood what makes BAT's work, but they occasionally landed on a successful example or two, probably by incremental refinement without really understanding the effects of their changes except empirically. Thus, the notion that they would have any better knowledge now seems a bit unlikely. Current manufacturers are trying to make consistently what were in essence happy accidents in the old days. Maybe my supposition really is heretical, but I bet not.
Rick "who thinks you can't go back" Denney