Posted by Matt G on October 10, 2001 at 12:15:53:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: St. Petersburg Rumor posted by dw on October 10, 2001 at 09:58:31:
Two notes:
1)Mirafone may have done some heavy marketing to get into the tuba market, but the quality of workmanship and overall playability have kept them popular for 30 plus years. Notice that Mirafone doesn't market nearly as heavily now and still outsells most if not all of the competition. Yamaha's pro-line horns are considerably better than older ones and are also considerably better than their student line. They are still updating their pro-line fairly continuously and this fact is why their stature has increased. My point is that the St. Pete horns aren't having serious problems addressed like poor valve workmanship, plating problems, and other basic manufacturing problems corrected.
2)While I am no particualr fan of a St. Pete I will not bash the horn incessantly. Even though I did not say anything kind about it the archives contain statements that are very frank about some people's veiw of this particular horn. People should hear about the negative feedback about particular horns. This forum will weed out the misleading information by the people knowing chiming in. Most of the time it is a forum like this that can help people from making mistakes by buying the wrong horn. While I don't own a St. Pete (and never will) I have played on them and have been witness to people having problems with thim that will cost half of the horns price to remedy. With the negative feedback about this horn in this forum, hopefully a few band directors have lookd into more options than just the St. Pete for $3K. Like I said, I am thankful for the St. Pete coming out so that the amount of good horns that could really be obtained in the $3K range would be exposed. And if it is my taxpayer dollars buying the horns, I would much rather have this money go towards a King that would last 20-30 years in the public shool system as opposed to a St. Pete that will last 3-5 years. Hopefully enough people have been educated to make a wise choice instead of the first one that comes along.
Matt G