Posted by Rick Denney on May 11, 2001 at 13:29:45:
This week, as part of my duties on a federal project, I had to attend the New York State Transportation Engineers Association meeting held in that place of special reverence to me: Lake Placid, New York. I looked on the map, and if I drove, I'd pass within a mile of Dillon Music, which was a bit less than halfway. Hmmm. Airfare is about $400 to Albany, plus rental car at $250, or I could bill the guvmint $350 for mileage and $76 for an extra night's stay, plus another day of meal per diem. So, I decided to drive solely to save taxpayer money. And as long as I was doing so, I might as well stop at Dillon's.
So, after setting up the time with Matt some months ago, I showed up Monday morning with three horns in hand (actually, both hands, and back, too--there's no parking at Dillon's and I had to walk a couple of blocks). I'm passing my account along in case some of you wonder what can be achieved by a personal visit to one of the repair gurus.
Matt's assignment on the Yamaha was to halt the growth of red (ARGH!), and generally service the instrument. And I wanted him to repair the sawed-off stem on the 4th valve of my ebay-junker Besson euphonium. Finally, I wanted his consultation on the York.
In preparation for the trip, I made a recording of myself playing a solo or two and some orchestral excerpts to listen in the car on the drive. I recorded every tune with the York, the Miraphone, and the Yamaha, with the intention of understanding my sound on these horns out front. This, needless to say, was a humbling--nearly shattering--experience, and it took a while for me to grow out of the depression and the immediate desire to leave the horns at Dillon for consignment sale. This condition was not helped by my other choice of listening material: Gene Pokorny's Orchestral Excerpts CD.
Here's what I heard: The York Master reveals some of the qualities of that heirloom sound that Gene achieves on the real York. Matt described this as a growl down low with a solid core to the sound in the middle harmonics, and that exactly describes what I hear in Gene's sound. The Miraphone had a bit more of a core to the sound, with a bit less bottom. Both were undeniably being played by Rick Denney, however, with all that that entails, and the differences were subtle at best.
But the most notable difference was that the Miraphone seemed to have a more legato attack on the notes. The York seemed to provide deeper, more pronounced slots, making slurred passages sound tongued. I hoped to take a bit of the edge off of the response, while keeping the characteristics of the sound.
In my consultation with Matt, he suggested that he bevel the edges of the main tuning slide--just a bit. This took ten seconds with a sharp broach, and the horn indeed smoothed out noticeably. Even I could notice it, though it was subtle and I make no claims that my perceptions were anything but the placebo effect.
Then he played the horn and listened to me play it. We felt that the first valve response was worse than the open bugle, and the second valve a hair worse but not as bad as the first. We both liked the third and fourth valve response. So, he looked at the tuning slides for the first valve, and immediately found a spot on the slide where the edge had been rolled over from inserting the slide incorrectly. He corrected that obvious flaw, and I once again played a Remington scale from F. The difference was startling. He made a much smaller adjustment to the second-valve slide, and suddenly the horn's response evened out. It was smooth in ways I hadn't been able to achieve previously. A good horn made better. Then, he vented the valves, which smoothed out the slurs and legato even more (actually, much more), and repaired a broken brace on the first valve tubing.
While he was doing that, I was taking advantage of the opportunity to play, in relative peace, the many horns on display in the store. I had this chance again on Thursday when I picked up the horns on my way back to Virginia. I'll dribble my impressions out when people ask about the specific horns I tried out, all from my perspective as a second-rate amateur, of course.
On Thursday, when I returned to pick up all the horns, I wandered into the room with the pro horns, and found Scott Mendoker trying out various instruments. Without me asking, he invited me to play his Beuscher/Meinl-Weston creation of Matt's, and I thought it was just flat fabulous. But I liked the Beuscher/Nirschl/Dillon a bit better. Scott was a great guy, and it was fun chatting with him, though the intimidation factor of him being there increased my tension level dramatically.
Matt brought out my Yamaha, and I played it in comparison with the other F's in the store. My impression of the 45SLP has improved, though I preferred the sound (but not the low register) of the Culbertson VMI more.
Matt then brought out my battered Besson. He had repaired the stem on the fourth valve and aligned the other three. I made some excuses about it, and he told me to just try it. I found it identical in sound and actually easier to play than a new 968 Sovereign that I tried out next to it. Matt seemed to think I was talking that horn down a bit too much, and I'm feeling a lot better about my sub-$500 (including repairs) Imperial.
He then let me take side-by-side pictures of my York and various other horns in the store (which I'll put on my web page in the fullness of time). Doing that is what leads me to believe that my 4/4 York is on the big side of 4/4, and the same might be said for a Miraphone 186. A lot of "4/4" horns were significantly smaller, both in size and sound.
Rick "what fun!" Denney