Hello Def1, several things point to Sinfonico having a good chance of a longer lifetime than the entry level Wessex Dolce and Festivo…
For one thing, Sinfonico is hand-made from sheet-metal in a high grade artisanal workshop, where it is my understanding that higher skilled artisans attend to the construction of each individual horn from start to finish. An artisanal approach to construction is likely to produce a higher degree in pride of work/quality hence process care and quality control than the distributed assembly-line used for the standard grade horns.
It is further my understanding that the Silver plating on Sinfonico may be thrice as thick as what is used on Festivo and Dolce.... Once again, this suggest that the overall fit&finish in Sinfonico might be even more robust/durable than in the other two Wessex euphoniums.
Now concerning Sinfonico's tone, as I heard from Dave's fabulous 12 comparative exerpts…. I confess that I am not only favorably surprised, but also very impressed. While in eight of them I detected a slight tonal/resonance/flexibility advantage in the Adams E3, in 4 of the examples I was totally unable to assign a preference to a particular member of the pair.
And no, I could not detect any nasality (or bassoonish tone) in Sinfonico, on the contrary, I found its tember to be glorious, if barely falling short of Dave's E3's magnificence. Furthermore, I was delighted about Sinfonico's full resonance, including in the dreaded compensated transitional area between the main fully chromatic region and the pedal region.... Conversely, My lovely Festivo does tend to sound a little cardboardy in that area.
Sure, we could argue that E3 may best Sinfonico's expressive potential, and that E3's intonation in the high treble might be more sure-footed than Sinfonico's, but.... it is worth considering that E3 Selected is priced at two and half times Sinfonico…. and the Sterling bell E3 costs some three times as much as Sinfonico. Even the more moderately priced Shires Q41 sells for almost twice as much as Sinfonico.
Thus, Since reading and listening to Dave Werden's revelatory review, I am now of the opinion that Wessex Sinfonico is effortlessly holding its own, comfortably above step up euphos, and may be even grazing the performance level of modern pro-horns.
Regards, Guido
Last edited by guidocorona; 08-13-2021 at 04:31 PM.
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