Having owned a Taylor I can honestly say if I was going to pick a horn that played great and was perfectly balanced I'd go for an another option, like an Eclipse (another UK horn if you are looking at UK manufacturers) . The Taylor horn, while being a VERY nice soloists' horn, didn't hold up when playing section at work.
Also holding up heavy horns on 4hr jobs is just too much for me, and I'm 29 and work out!
The Eclipse is by far the best horn I have ever owned and will ever own. I played lead tonight with the Artie Shaw Orchestra and the lead bone Player (Doug Elliot, amazing player and master trombone mouthpiece craftsman) said after the first tune "what are you playing on?"... he absolutely flipped at how amazing the sound is out of the horn. It projects so much more than any of my big horns did and still retains an amazingly fat sound, even at VERY loud dynamics.
Feel free to email me off list as most people on this list know that I've owned practically one or two of every model out there.
-Trent
www.trentaustin.com