Posted by Matt G on March 13, 2001 at 08:57:41:
In Reply to: Re: VMI for sale posted by Jeremy Hildebrand on March 13, 2001 at 00:14:12:
I have used his horn in wind ensembles, bands, brass bands and attempted quintet work with it. This is my advice: Mixed (woodwinds, brass) wind bands greater than 35-40 people depending on the strength of their sound, brass ensembles 8 and larger, orchestras 60 and larger. This is a general rule I feel the horn works best in. Mouthpiece changes will help the flexibility of the horn, but the sound output remains fairly constant. These large horns (5/4 & up) are simply more effective amplifiers of what buzz is coming through the mouthpiece, so even though you can use these in a small group, i.e. quintet, you may not feel comfortable doing so, because you'll be playing in the horn's 10-50% volume range. This isn't paticularly comfortable to me as I fell better using 20-90% of a horns volume range. I hope this doesn't confuse you to much. By the way the horn is identical to a PT-7P except from the pictures you'll see the first valve slide is different in that they removed the dogleg whih straigtens the slide and makes it much more accessible to pull, which it needs to be. Both the first and third are easy to get to and are the only ones that need to be pulled when the fourth valve is tuned to play Db in tune and D is played 1&3 with the first pulled out. Second and fifth also never need to be touched when the horn is set up. The advantage of this horn and other 6/4 .750 bore piston horns is that they take the air of a 4/4 to produce sound, however the response charachteristic is slightly different and I feel that your chops have to be ready to find slots a little quicker with a horn this size.
Hope this helps,
Matt G