First of all, please note that the message is not mine... it was originally written by Jens Lindemann only a week or so ago and he gave me permission to copy it to this website.
That said.........
I think that the problem with "BACH" is this thing called "brand association". Take a look at Olds... they are made by a company that bought THE NAME. How about Conn? King?.... same thing. The NAME is purchased, not necessarily the factory, the tools, the workers, the molds and dies, the craftsmanship. Now consider Bach... Selmer got their nose into the business and changed it. Read the history of Bach from their own website.... they have changed the very design of the instrument over the years as well as where it is made, and by whom. Now UMI (aka Steinway) has the wheel of the ship. What horns are still made by the original owners (or descendants thereof), with the same factories, the same tooling, the same workers? Aside from the obvious (the hand-made, "one-at-a-time" horns), there is Kanstul, Schilke, Getzen. There has been an enormous shake up in the European industry since the reunification of Germany. (Most of the old makers were located in East Germany... including some of the "brands" picked up by Voglandishe...something-or-other... B & S). I suppose you could "maybe" toss Yamaha into the heap as well although they have used ultra high tech and quality inspection to the maximum extent possible.
Even "Boosey & Hawkes" (aka "The Music Group" after some financial mismanagement messed them up) fell prey to distorting the original quality instrument (French Besson... which everyone else is really pseudo-copying) with mass production and "go where the labor is cheapest, regardless whether it knows how to make an instrument or not". Sure, Jupiter is now making a better instrument than they were... but it is still made where it is because of low cost labor. I recently read a report (wish I could find the reference again) by a British music dealer who toured the Jupiter factory... WHICH WAS LOCATED IN JINBAO, CHINA!.... same place as the Wally Mart/Sams Club horns come from!!!!! Seems that labor in China is even cheaper than in Taiwan.... duhh.
If you have read this far... good...'cause I'm not done. Jens may be talking about the problem above but I get more of the sense that he is really talking about customers buying a horn simply "because of it's name" or "because of who else plays it". He is talking about telling someone that they need to "buy this brand or that brand". Look, every horn that is produced (again with the possible exception of Yamaha) has variables in the way it is put together. In engineering we call the phenomenon "Tolerance buildup". (A thousandth here, two thou over there, a touch less in that spot eventually becomes "A non-identical product"). When you design aircraft engines you have to consider that tolerance stackup when you set the dimensions for individual parts. Couple that manufacturing variability with "cost effective" quality control and "voila!", you aren't producing identical instruments any longer. No longer can you say that "Any Bach is far better than any Conn so that's what everyone should play". Therefore you should no longer be dictating what brand instrument a player purchases.
Further, if sound quality of an instrument varies according to something as "relatively insignificant" as the coating of the finish (lacquer vs plating", then it stand to reason that those thousandths of tolerance difference are going to also affect the sound quality to a greater or lesser degree. Therefore you should also not be saying that "all Bachs have that Bach sound and therefore we should all be playing them" (or any other brand for that matter).
No longer should we be obsessed with "what mouthpiece does Maynard use... I gotta get me one"... or "how many thou. should I bore this piece out so that it is the same as Jens'"... or... or.
What to do then? Simple.... GET YER BUTT (and your chops) OUT TO THE STORES AND TRY EVERYTHING YOU CAN AND BUY WHAT TURNS YOUR OWN CRANK!!! Then go home and practice what's left of your butt off.
Tra la la la....
Happy New Year, everyone! Be Happy, be Healthy, be Safe, and remember those whose need is greater than your own.
