I also was in the exibits room, not sure if it was before or after you guys, but right in the middle of it we got an announcement that said "your sound is bleeding into the choir room, so please quit playing", that sucked. Here all the venders had put all this time and effort into displaying their horns, and now nobody can even try them out. Man, if I was a vendor would I ever be pissed. I would get a huge refund out of them. I asked some of the guys in choir about it and they said it wasn't even that bad.
Anyway, I tried out a piccolo (before we were told not to play, I'm not sure if it was the same one you tried out, could've been though, since I only saw one piccolo in that whole place, or it could've been that someone bought the one you tried out before I got there), and I tried it out and it sounded like playing a trumpet with the valves down half-way (any trumpet player would know that that isn't acceptable, and you too since you seem to know enough about trumpets). So I played on and it still played like that. The guy at the booth said "it's a piccolo, maybe you're just not playing high enough", but I knew something was wrong with the horn or the valves weren't put in correctly. So I asked him about it and he put them in the other way, of course then, I blowed and got the effect of the valves being put in backwards (you can blow all you want and nothing gets past the valves, any trumpet player know how that is). Same thing happened when I tried out their E flat trumpet. I wasn't too impressed with that model, I think it was an Allora or something (the piccolo, not sure about the E flat). Was that the same one you tried after he must've fixed it, or a different one? Did you come there before or after me? I'm thinking after. We looked at the exibits some time in the morning. Do you know? LMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What if you would've filled one of THEIR trumpets up with water.

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