| This post is in no way intended to be disrespectful of Zeus trumpets. I played and reviewed a Zeus G on TH. The review was as fair as I could make it, and I believe favorable to Zeus. When I have the opportunity I recommend a prospective buyer try a Zeus before buying Bach.
But the Zachery Music finance plan, as it is presented as interest free financing, appears to me to be somewhat misleading. You have to have a credit card to recieve the financing, and the horn is paid for by successive charges against your card. It is true Alex is not receiving interest for your horn purchase, but you are nevertheless paying interest. You are paying interest to the credit card company. So it's not interest free financing. It's just that the bank receives the interest, not the music company.
Now at the beginning of this thread someone made the statement that Eclipse trumpets "are ridiculously expensive". I disagree with that statement. I can't afford to buy one. That's true. But I can't afford to buy a lot of things. That doesn't necessarily mean they are "ridiculously expensive".
I was fortunate enough to win an Eclipse recently. Just a few hours ago I got off the phone with Leigh McKinny, as he called to see how I wanted my new horn built. He would have called sooner, but he has been very ill the past couple of weeks. We started at the open end of the receiver and went through the horn inch by inch until we finished at the inside of the bell. Leigh took two pages of notes listing the details I wanted on the horn. Every option I wanted, I got. The trumpet, when I get it, won't have come off an assembly line along with hundreds of other horns just like it, as in the case of the Zeus G, or with tens of thousands of other horns just like it, as is the case with Bach Strads. If one were to contact either the Zeus factory or the Bach factory with a two page list of custom features he would like to have built into a horn, he would no doubt discover the real meaning of "ridiculously expensive".
It normally takes up to 6 weeks for Leigh to completely build a custom trumpet by hand. He has material expenses, shop overhead expenses, he pays several technicians, and he has to make enough to live on himself. If a new Eclipse costs $3600, and you divide that by 6 weeks of work, that comes to $600/wk from that horn. Subtract material expenses, shop overhead, cost of labor, etc. from the $600, and one starts to wonder how Leigh can make a profit at all. He can't produce thousands of horns in a month. He can't produce hundreds. He can't even produce tens.
I strongly take exception to the "ridiculously expensive" accusation. To me building several thousand machine made stock horns with decades old technology and selling them for $1500 each comes closer to being "ridiculously expensive", than the-by comparison-very modest cost of an Eclipse. If you don't think the Eclipse is modestly priced, make a list of details you want on a custom horn and then shop around. Call Leigh and see what he will build you a horn for. Then call Monette and ask him how much to build the same horn. And then just for kicks call the Bach factory or Kanstul. See what kind of quotes you get from them.
An Eclipse being beyond the price range of most mucisians? Yeah, I consent to that. An Eclipse (or Wild Thing, because it also fits the custom motiff) being ridiculously expensive? Not in my book. If one can afford it, they're worth every penny.
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S.T.
What do we have that we did not receive, and if we received it, why do we glory, as if we received it not? |