| Toady I tried a 2007 Prana C trumpet..
I've never been a big Monette fan. I've been been die hard with my Bach C trumpet that I had built for me in 2001. It's been good to me and has been the best C trumpet I've played so far, but here are my thoughts on what I felt about this Monette today.
The first thing I did was record several things on each horn and listen to them a few hours later in a mixed way without knowing which one I played as a blind test to eliminate any partial judgement. My first impression of the Monette was very perplexing. I felt like I was overblowing the horn. I was playing what sounded behind the horn like a nice solid MF, while the spectactor was more or less being plowed down by my sound. It was monsterously loud without any edge on it, yet behind the bell It didn't sound loud at all. I played with my aural concept in mind and found I had to manipulate the horn to sound the way I wanted it to, rather than just blow and let the equipment work for me. On the positive note, the horn was very easy to manipulate, I've never played a monette that was this easy to work around on.
As for the other side of things I noticed a few things. I listen very closely to my sound, as I feel it's one of my top priorities. From behind the bell I didn't feel like the horn resonated the way I'm used to, it seemed to lack that vibrant shimmering yet warm and encompassing sound I always try to get. So decide to hit the basics on this horn, long tones, scales, slurs, ad nauseum. Still no dice.. I recorded as many excerpts as I could remember off the top of my head. We came back to it and listened, and immediately I could hear a major difference between the two, although to be honest I couldn't really tell which one was my Bach, all I knew was that there was a horn I favoured more. I listened for a long time and wrote down notes on each horn "Horn A sounded like ____, while Horn B sounded like _____" on each excerpt. In the end it was a 80/20 split Bach/Monette. Perhaps things would have been different if I had played on a Monette Mouthpiece, instead of my GR, but I just can't find a Monette Mouthpiece that I like, at all.
I still think the C trumpet is a fantastic horn, it's just not for me.
Does any one else have any expierence with these trumpets?
Jon |