Posted by Daniel Bradley on April 15, 2002 at 13:24:06:
I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time on this horn, which was mentioned in some posts below by Scott Mendoker and others. I go to school in Cleveland, very near to the UMI plant that manufactures Conn, King, and Benge instruments. Rob Phillips, who is the manager of research and development for UMI (and also a tubist) loaned the horn to Ron Bishop, who let us hold onto it in our studio for about a week or so. As Scott said, this is a very good instrument with tremdous potential.
Unfortunately, when we asked Mr. Phillips if it was going to go into production any time soon, he told us that it wouldn't. He told us that there is a good deal of tweaking that still needs to go into the horn before they would have a model that they want to sell. He also said that at this point UMI doesn't even have the proper tools to mass produce such a horn- this one is simply a prototype. From what I experienced, the horn still has a few intonation things that need to be improved upon. But it is a fabulous sounding horn, comfortable to play, and will probably be very affordable once it is actually on the market. Let's hope that they continue to work on it.
DanB