Hi Everyone
New to the forum, so please be gentle!
By way of background: in my late teens, early twenties I sat in number two seats at Norwich Citadel and then Coventry City bands. Since then have played baritone, then back to euphonium, then Bandmaster (so not really playing at all), then a bit more euphonium. For the past three years, I've been on Eb Bass. Just back on to euphonium in the past couple of months. I have a Besson custom made euph that I bought from my brother in law, so no idea of model, etc!
I am in the market for a new euphonium and am currently trialling the gold Besson Prestige 2052-8G, silver Besson prestige 2052-2 and Geneva Cardinal GVL models. I am also looking for a new mouthpiece having played on a DW 0AL for over 30 years!
First impressions:
Gold Besson Prestige is a beautiful instrument. It certainly sounds the most resonant (due to the floating lead pipe, I guess) with a slightly "understated" tone compared to the silver Prestige (perhaps due to the gold lacquer?). It does seem more of a blow than the other two.
Silver Besson Prestige has a more defined tone than the Gold, but I'm finding it more difficult to pitch on this instrument (possibly only due to changing the instruments and mouthpieces so often in one session). I did manage a clean version of the beginning of The Call of the Righteous towards the end of my lunchtime session!
Geneva Cardinal GVL seems the easiest to play. It is much easier to centre the sound of each note and have not so many of them fall over. But I do worry that it sounds more like a souped up Baritone than the Besson sound I am used to.
Tuning on the Gold Besson was terrible, but almost spot on on the Geneva (I've just realised I don't think I tested the Silver for that).
Mouthpiece-wise, I don't seem to be able to get away from the DW SM3U from a variety of DW classics, Alliance DCs and an SM3UX and SM4UXR.
Would welcome any feedback and advice!
Kind regards.
Rob