How did the Army take care of their horns?
Originally posted by: bpwilliams
It has been said that a Besson sounds better after throwing it down the stairs. They are built like tanks and after you show it who's boss, aka showing it the stairs, it will play great and last the rest of your playing career.
Showing the horn the stairs sounds like an interesting approach to "play conditioning". Does anyone have any experience they'd like to share with what happens when you show other makes of euphonium the stairs? In particular, I'm wondering if, in general, the Chinese clones have also cloned the "stair behavior" of the horns from which they were copied. My Besson New Standard didn't seem to be affected one way or the other by being shown the stairs (it probably thought "been there, done that"). However, neither did my Tuba Exchange 1150. On the other hand, my Meinl Weston tuba did start to play better after it saw the stairs a few times...or maybe the exercise of lugging it up and down had improved my breath support!
Frank Manola
Pan American Eb, Meinl Weston 20, Wessex "Solo" EEb, King 2341 tubas
Besson New Standard, TE 1150 compensating euphs
Park Street Brass
Old South UMC Brass & Organ, Reading MA
Wakefield Retired Men's Club Band
Windjammers Unlimited