Worth the Wait

Saturday, February 24, 2024

Barbara’s not feeling well today and spent most of the day in the bed. It seems to be the same crud I’ve been dealing with (that makes you cough a lot and just make you feel miserable). I hope she gets out of it faster than me. I’ve been on steroids and antibiotics again for the past couple days and it’s really helping to liven me up.

So, the potd is from me today instead of Barbara. Sorry.

I got a new toy in the mail a couple days ago. It is a new soprano (Eb) cornet. It was a bit of a wait to get it as I ordered it about eight months ago after trying out several models from several companies over a period of several months. This is what happens when you decide you want an instrument that’s very popular and also made by a small company that can only produce so many instruments at a time. With a custom maker like this, you wait longer, but you tend to get something really nice after the wait.

So, I already have a soprano cornet. Why do I need another one? Or a different one? Good questions. I don’t. But I decided that at my age, I could be done manhandling an old instrument that has a bunch of quirks and could maybe move to something more modern with some modern design improvements. It turns out that I was right. A move to a modern replacement is a success. This new soprano cornet has absolutely lovely intonation, a sweet tone, and much better note accuracy than my old horn. It’s a total win as far as I can tell so far.

The mass instrument market still relies heavily on a small number of large-company brands getting the majority of the customers. For example, in the trumpet world, the Selmer Bach company still is the standard in the eyes of many and many players won’t even consider straying off that path. Not me. I enjoy playing instruments made by a variety of excellent small companies. They produce many fewer instruments, but to me they’re more special, and in many ways better instruments because they’ve spent the research and development time necessary to really figure out what works and what doesn’t, taking into consideration the best of the past with some modern innovation, while the mass market companies tend to stick with what they know has worked for the past many generations with only some occasional new tweaks.

This reminds me of a friend of mine from several years ago. I showed up for a big band gig and he announced that his years-long search for a Mount Vernon Bach trumpet (revered by many as the grandfatherly standard) was over. He found one and “It is fantastic!” He let me play his holy grail. I thought it was an absolutely horrible instrument (although I didn’t tell him that). I couldn’t play it in tune and every pitch seemed to blow differently and have its own tone quality. To each their own, I guess.

I like the modern instruments by the small companies. This particular company is Eclipse in the UK. Yeah, it took longer to get one, but it was worth the wait. Playing this is so much less work than my previous one that it feels a bit like cheating.