Posted by David Wilson on October 14, 2003 at 03:19:18:
In Reply to: Re: Comparing old-timers equipment to today posted by Jim Andrada on October 14, 2003 at 02:15:04:
I believe the use of modern equipment has changed just like the use of the car or football player or, yes, even the tuba player. There are more, and better, choices for each of the previous.
The car is not a Model T, although a Model T seems really cool to some of us. Cars today, just 25 years after I bought my first house, cost more than that first house, are almost as big, and have lots more technology built in.
A football player of today doesn't begin to compare with one of the first Super Bowl players (I have a friend who played on the Super Bowl III championship team as a starter. He is 6'3" tall, weighs at the most 260 and is one of the sweetest people I know. He made a grand total of $40,000 that season. His family is not rich and he works as a machinist to support a wife and 2 boys.)
Tubas are like the football player and the car. We have "choices" today not available back then.
The guys in orchestras stuck to their jobs just like they stuck to everything else, from wives of 50+ years to that old souzie or Holton or York or King or ......
We have to look at society in general to truly understand. This is the "throw away" society. I mean this world wide, and not just the United States anymore. Any society not deemed 3rd world has become throw away.
We have the best equipment money can buy today just like yesterday. Those old horns of the "old timers" were truly the best money could buy - then. Today is no different.
In 50 years someone will look back and wonder, rightly so, how we could have possibly played on the junk we call tubas today.