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I'm going to preface this by saying this:
Those of you that know me know that I like to try every horn I can get my hands on, sometimes to the point of futility.
That said, I sold some other music and audio gear, and ordered one of the new gold lacquered prestige horns from Thomann in Germany, after finding through the Besson distributor that there were none available in the states. The part number is 2052-8G-0.
Hilariously, the horn left Germany on Thursday and was delivered today, meaning a package from Germany gets here (Chicago area) faster than a package from California.
I expected to feel about this horn the same way I've felt about every other Prestige I've played, both English and German origin. That is, all the examples I've personally played have had great valves, but the response has left something to be desired. In particular, the "high" concert B natural is a real bear, and the response in the neighborhood of that note can be squirrely. Thus, I half expected to play the horn for a while, say "yep, I've tried it", and send it back to Thomann.
It's a little more complicated than expected.
First, a few general comments about the horn:
The serial number seems to place it as the 700th overall horn made at Besson in 2020. I have to assume that means it's from late in the year, although I have no idea how many horns they make in a year. In any case, I've never seen a serial number with so many zeroes in it!
The horn came in the Besson case pictured below, along with what appear to be lighter valve caps as "extras", and a bunch of felts and valve silencers. The horn was in a tarnish resistant bag when I opened the plastic. (I'm not sure why they'd do this, as it seems superfluous with a Lacquer horn... maybe to maintain parity with the accessories on the silver prestige?)
The horn also came with:
An alliance Prestige E2 in silver.
A Silver "grime gutter" (this seems very lazy, since it would be the only thing on the horn that's silver)
An attachable lyre holder
a hex tool presumably for the trigger attachment points
A polishing cloth
A MTS guard that's similar to the ones Adams now uses
Some alliance valve oil
The first thing I did was pull the valves to clean the valves and casings and re-oil before playing. The valves appear clean. Interestingly, the horn came with mead springs installed stock. I'm not sure whether they're the "light" springs or the regular ones. Does anyone know?
There are some marks on the first valve and inside the first valve casing that look almost like it was scraped by something in a lathe or something similar. They're not deep, so I'm not sure whether to be concerned about it. I had a similar thing on a miraphone I had a number of years ago; Miraphone ultimately found that they had a tool that was broken and it was creating that problem. (they replaced the valve that was affected)
I pulled the first valve compensating loop and the alignment was good out of the box. I also checked the 4th valve by looking up through where the main tuning slide enters the horn. It also looks good. This is an improvement over a lot of other horns I've played that had TERRIBLE alignment out of the box, as though the maker just said "ok, we made the horn, throw some felts on there and call it good".
The overall response seems to be better than the other prestige horns I've played, which I was pleasantly surprised about.
The overall resonance also seems to be a little more vibrant than other Prestige examples I've played. It doesn't seem quite as resonant as the Sovereign 967 I've got, but I think that makes sense, as that horn is lighter in terms of metal than the prestige. (Although the sovereign DOES have a trigger on it, so that shouldn't be a contributor).
I played through my daily routine so I could get used to the way the horn responds, and afterward played a few of my "normal" excerpts that I'm very familiar with.
Cosma Concerto Mvt 2 - I used this one to check intonation against a piano accompaniment track I created, and it plays through the very low register and the upper register of the horn. Response was very good, and intonation was good, although it's still sharp in all the places one might expect a besson to be sharp. Easily managed with the trigger.
Excerpts from Sparke's Harmony Music (in particular, the euphonium solo in the first chunk), to check the high register resopnse. Usually, the high concert D is a real bear, but using the 2nd valve, it came right out. In fact, it was clearer than on any of the other horns I've played recently. So much so that I stopped and said "well S***..." out loud. I didn't expect that.
Chunks of Pantomime, since it's familiar, and I like to use the B arpeggio to check the upper B natural. It wasn't perfect, but still responded significantly better than I expected, and certainly better than any other example of a prestige I've ever played.
I played through some stuff that I'm currently learning, and enjoyed it.
All of the above said, I'm wondering if I just happened upon a well built example of a horn, or if they actually updated the design enough to "fix" the issues I've felt on every other example of a prestige I've ever played. I'm pleasantly surprised by the horn overall, and to say I'm surprised would be an understatement. Go figure.
Anyway, just thought I'd offer my experience for anyone that's curious.
Photos below of the case and stuff that came inside, and of the horn.
Horn in the case:
"Case Candy"
Clean Valve:
Valve with odd Marks:
Valve casing with odd internal marks:
Stuff that came with the horn:
Extra Valve Caps:
Those of you that know me know that I like to try every horn I can get my hands on, sometimes to the point of futility.
That said, I sold some other music and audio gear, and ordered one of the new gold lacquered prestige horns from Thomann in Germany, after finding through the Besson distributor that there were none available in the states. The part number is 2052-8G-0.
Hilariously, the horn left Germany on Thursday and was delivered today, meaning a package from Germany gets here (Chicago area) faster than a package from California.
I expected to feel about this horn the same way I've felt about every other Prestige I've played, both English and German origin. That is, all the examples I've personally played have had great valves, but the response has left something to be desired. In particular, the "high" concert B natural is a real bear, and the response in the neighborhood of that note can be squirrely. Thus, I half expected to play the horn for a while, say "yep, I've tried it", and send it back to Thomann.
It's a little more complicated than expected.
First, a few general comments about the horn:
The serial number seems to place it as the 700th overall horn made at Besson in 2020. I have to assume that means it's from late in the year, although I have no idea how many horns they make in a year. In any case, I've never seen a serial number with so many zeroes in it!
The horn came in the Besson case pictured below, along with what appear to be lighter valve caps as "extras", and a bunch of felts and valve silencers. The horn was in a tarnish resistant bag when I opened the plastic. (I'm not sure why they'd do this, as it seems superfluous with a Lacquer horn... maybe to maintain parity with the accessories on the silver prestige?)
The horn also came with:
An alliance Prestige E2 in silver.
A Silver "grime gutter" (this seems very lazy, since it would be the only thing on the horn that's silver)
An attachable lyre holder
a hex tool presumably for the trigger attachment points
A polishing cloth
A MTS guard that's similar to the ones Adams now uses
Some alliance valve oil
The first thing I did was pull the valves to clean the valves and casings and re-oil before playing. The valves appear clean. Interestingly, the horn came with mead springs installed stock. I'm not sure whether they're the "light" springs or the regular ones. Does anyone know?
There are some marks on the first valve and inside the first valve casing that look almost like it was scraped by something in a lathe or something similar. They're not deep, so I'm not sure whether to be concerned about it. I had a similar thing on a miraphone I had a number of years ago; Miraphone ultimately found that they had a tool that was broken and it was creating that problem. (they replaced the valve that was affected)
I pulled the first valve compensating loop and the alignment was good out of the box. I also checked the 4th valve by looking up through where the main tuning slide enters the horn. It also looks good. This is an improvement over a lot of other horns I've played that had TERRIBLE alignment out of the box, as though the maker just said "ok, we made the horn, throw some felts on there and call it good".
The overall response seems to be better than the other prestige horns I've played, which I was pleasantly surprised about.
The overall resonance also seems to be a little more vibrant than other Prestige examples I've played. It doesn't seem quite as resonant as the Sovereign 967 I've got, but I think that makes sense, as that horn is lighter in terms of metal than the prestige. (Although the sovereign DOES have a trigger on it, so that shouldn't be a contributor).
I played through my daily routine so I could get used to the way the horn responds, and afterward played a few of my "normal" excerpts that I'm very familiar with.
Cosma Concerto Mvt 2 - I used this one to check intonation against a piano accompaniment track I created, and it plays through the very low register and the upper register of the horn. Response was very good, and intonation was good, although it's still sharp in all the places one might expect a besson to be sharp. Easily managed with the trigger.
Excerpts from Sparke's Harmony Music (in particular, the euphonium solo in the first chunk), to check the high register resopnse. Usually, the high concert D is a real bear, but using the 2nd valve, it came right out. In fact, it was clearer than on any of the other horns I've played recently. So much so that I stopped and said "well S***..." out loud. I didn't expect that.
Chunks of Pantomime, since it's familiar, and I like to use the B arpeggio to check the upper B natural. It wasn't perfect, but still responded significantly better than I expected, and certainly better than any other example of a prestige I've ever played.
I played through some stuff that I'm currently learning, and enjoyed it.
All of the above said, I'm wondering if I just happened upon a well built example of a horn, or if they actually updated the design enough to "fix" the issues I've felt on every other example of a prestige I've ever played. I'm pleasantly surprised by the horn overall, and to say I'm surprised would be an understatement. Go figure.
Anyway, just thought I'd offer my experience for anyone that's curious.
Photos below of the case and stuff that came inside, and of the horn.
Horn in the case:
"Case Candy"
Clean Valve:
Valve with odd Marks:
Valve casing with odd internal marks:
Stuff that came with the horn:
Extra Valve Caps:
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