Sovereign v. Prestige

[kevinlau45]

After spending the bulk of my high school career on a Sovereign 968 made in the early to mid 90's I finally made the jump to a York Eminence 4052. I just completely fell in love with the dark, rich tone that my musically un-inclined parents even described as many times more "wonderful and singing" than my school owned Besson. It turns out I was playing on a pretty bad horn all along and I didn't even know it! The soldering came undone in 3 different places and you couldn't even push it back into place cause it would put pressure on the 1st valve and cause it to jam. As soon as you went below C in the staff down to Bb and below the entire horn would vibrate and shake slightly in your hands. This didn't happen with any of the horns that I play-tested before landing on the York.



Anyways, my question was, just out of curiosity, what are the differences besides visual aesthetics and tuning trigger does the new Prestige 2052 have compared to the new Sovereign 967? I never play-tested the Sovereigns because of my experiences with my school's Besson. But now that I realized I just borrowed a really bad horn I'm curious to know. Anyone care to chime in?

[Kurfie549]

Sovereign v. Prestige

I own a sovereign and got a chance to look at a prestige this weekend at a National Guard Rehearsal. The sovereign has a fully free-floating leadpipe with only one brace, whereas the prestige has two braces along the leadpipe, and i feel this allows the sovereign a slight advantage in response. the sovereign also feels lke the bell material is slightly lighter in comparison to teh prestige. Overall i feel that the Sovereign has a slightly lighter sound with more "shimmer" and better response. The prestige offers better intonation and more "Punch". I feel that for someone who does a lot more large ensemble playing the prestige would be preferable not only because of the better intonation afforded by the trigger, but also because i feel it is much easier to simply punch through, or sing over the top of an ensemble depending on what you are trying to do in any given situation. Both are AWESOME horns though.