Posted by Tim Cary on July 28, 1999 at 16:05:27:
In Reply to: Yamaha 641 posted by Doug G. on July 28, 1999 at 15:16:55:
As I stated in an earlier post, some of the schools in my area just bought a load of St. Pete's. Both of the schools were looking to get new horns, and wanted to know alternatives to the YBB-641's that they already had. One of the schools got the St. Pete's on approval, and the band director (who is a tuba player and has a Mirafone) was very impressed, and felt the scale was better than on Yamahas. The sound was less clunky than the Yamahas also (I play a CC, and I think all BBb's are a bit clunky though). The horns were also lower in price than the Yamahas, which was a plus. I played a couple of the horns that they got in, and liked the sound, however the quality of construction of any Yamaha is better than the Russian horns, and the Mirafone knock-off linkage assemblies seemed questionable to me. If you're in the $3000 - $3500 price range for a horn, you might want to check out VMI horns. They're German and seem to be well built (the few that I tried).