I found a good deal on a used silver Besson 967, a late 90's or early 2000 model. The Yamaha I traded was an early 90s model, lacquer.

As I expected, the Yamaha wins hands down on consistency with regards to intonation. The horn is distinctly heavier than the Besson and the 11" bell is noticeably smaller.

The Besson sound is as advertised - singing and projecting. Wow. The first scale I played won me over. The valve action is much, much quicker and more fluid. The thing I struggled with about the 641 was the huge amount of air it took to move around on the horn. While the Besson is no lightweight (I haven't overpowered it yet), it has a greater amount of flexibility and opens up nicely in the high register. I stuggled to reach Bb above staff on the Yamaha while the 2nd D above bc staff is reasonable with the Besson. It has intonation issues on a couple of spots which I can adjust with the use of the 4th valve in the upper register. In the future, I might slap a tuning trigger on there. Something else I found was the spit valve on the main tuning slide worked very well to discharge fluid; I had to pull the slide on the Yamaha as the spit valve didn't work real well.

I also got a chance to play the newest Nirschl euphonum model. Apparantly the horn is now going to be manufactured by Weril in Brazil. The Nirschl reminded me of the Weril I used to have - valve action moderate, reasonably flexible, I found the sound to be well centered. I really didn't like the satin finish but that's a subjective thing. The valve caps were topped with rubber - that is a first as they are usually felt but maybe not a bad idea (it looked pretty weird). It had a few intonation problems that would make me think twice about it. I found the Weril horns to be pretty decent so maybe they will work things out in the future.

What I told the clerk, in short: the Yamaha can't be beat for ensemble work and blending perfectly in a group, not too dark and not too bright. I think the Besson sound can cut pretty well and in my case, will be a better horn for jazz and rock.

I'll keep everyone posted on the 967 in the future.

Ryan