Posted by Jerry Cadden on September 16, 2003 at 00:24:28:
You know what's funny about the best/worst debate? The extreme subjectivity involved in picking a horn. This list is a good place to air praise and grievances about different horns, but each type will perform radically differently in each player's hands.
As an example, I play a 1985-vintage 4/4, 5 valve Rudolf Meinl CC, with Perantucci 10 (PT-88) and ( (PT-64) and a Marcinkiewicz H1. I bought it new in '85 sight-unseen on the T.U.B.A. convention playtest recommendation of my teacher at Southern Mississippi, Mark Moore (since moved in the U of Illinois). On the face of it, it's both too big and too small for certain applications, but it fits me perfectly. I've had extended playing time on a big Alexander CC, a 3/4 Rudi CC, an early number Yorkbrunner, an Alex F, a Rudi F, a Yamaha F, a Besson Eb, a Hirsbrunner F, a Mirafone F [yikes], a Mirafone 186 [double yikes], and an early number Hirbrunner HB-2P...but I kept coming back to the fact that my Rudi is what I hear as "my sound."
We often have to (or want to) tailor what the horn can "do" to what we need it for--or what we hear in our heads as a good sound. This Rudi has played in numerous orchestras, brass bands, wind ensembles, brass choirs, and quintets--and, changing mouthpieces and my "approach" to the horn, it always sounds like what my idea of the music is. [Granted, having had lessons with "big Midwestern"-type players, my sound tends big...:-)] It's played Mahler, Wagner, Prokofiev, John Williams, and Shostakovich with the PT-88 bucket, but it's also played Berlioz, Brahms, Mendelssohn, the VW, Tubby the Tuba, and even Bydlo with the much smaller PT-64, all the while staying true to what my idea of sound is.
Could I use an F right now for quintet? Sure. But my point is this: along the lines of the new Saturn car commercial playing in the States, the horn often finds you, and not the other way round. I've played this one horn so long and so much that *it* is what my sound is. I can tell it's "me" playing when I play another horn, but it feels strange, sometimes being unacceptable for just not being my Rudi. Hard to explain till you've found "the" horn for you. A myriad of other horns might be better in some respects (faster valves, better low Db, freer high register, etc.), but even other Rudi 4/4 horns just don't do it.
[If I can figure out how to post pictures, I'll post some of what it looked like when it came from the Tuba Exchange...it had been dropped from the shipping crate en route and the bell was foled down damned-near to the lead pipe!]
JAC