Shipping crate from Wessex:
Attachment 6447
Nicely packed in plenty of foam, with a complimentary Wessex baseball cap, bottle of valve oil, pencil, and what I think is a mouthpiece case:
Attachment 6448
The Maly in its cute little case:
Attachment 6449
First glance of this beautiful little instrument:
Attachment 6450
The Maly is really fun to play. Obviously this is a small instrument with a small bore, and it sounded a little stuffy for the first few minutes when I started playing. It's easy to overblow when I'm used to the airflow of my Mack Brass compensating euphonium. But after a little adjustment in intonation, the Maly does make a nice sweet sound. The valves are super smooth right out of the box. There was a tiny bit of metallic rattle that seemed to resonate with a few notes--I thought it was from the end screws on the valve block or from the little rail thing that keeps the tuning slide from falling out, because it seemed to go away when I tightened them, but it has come back a few times.
Fit/finish are otherwise pretty good--there is a little bit of greenish corrosion where the bracket that holds that little rail is soldered to the instrument--any idea how to safely get rid of that?
Sorry about the photos all being rotated--they are right-side up everywhere else, but somehow when I insert them here the system rotates them 90 degrees counterclockwise.