Scooter01

We cherish our free speech! Goodbye everyone.

gtromble

But not, apparently, free horns -- or nearly so. $175 for a gold, professional trumpet..... Now, why is that so hard to believe?

Anyone up for a double blind test between the "China Professional Trumpet" and an Eclipse?

Come on now......

GT

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Galen Tromble
Silver Spring, MD

Tootsall

Wouldn't work... you forgot about the tuning slide location; dead give-away.

tromj

The irony of this all is that the Chinese factories are very good at reverse engineering, and will eventually produce some real good instruments. Soundwise, some of the Selmans approach midlevel US or European horns.
The reason why the Chinese horns are so cheap is because this kind of manufacture does not lend itself well to a bland sort of imitation, but requires real experience and craftsmanship. Thats why they look ok, but the valves don't work well.
But they will get there. And when they do, the price differential will stlll be there, but perhaps not such a great one. At that point, we will have real deicsions to make. If you opted for a Haier AC recently, you bought a well made Chinese competitor to the big name brands.

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Bach 37
Yamaha 8310Z
Yamaha 631 Flugel
Getzen 850 Cornet
Yamaha Picc
Yamaha Xeno C 8445
Monette B1-5M, B1-5F, B1-5D cornet, Stork 3P, Monette C1-5M

Manny Laureano

All kidding aside, I've had a chance to blow into some of those horns and I can manage up to about a single forte at most. Past that dynamic, they shatter like glass. But it's somehow different from other student horns in the quality of sound and stability. Much less stable and the sound gets raucous very quickly.

ML

Pedal C

I used to work in an instrument repair shop and the techs wouldn't do a chem clean on those kind of horns after they tried it on a ~$150 french horn and the thing fell apart, literally. THe customer was warned that it could happen and since it took 20 solder points to put it back together, it cost over $200 PLUS the chem clean.

If that "instrument" was a car, it would have been totaled.

From a cleaning.

Jason.

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"The oboe's A is to make sure we still play it 1 and 2" - Bud Herseth

"One way or another, every patient stops bleeding." - Scrubs

Zaraskabat

Old farts like myself can remember when we were kids and anything made in Japan was crap. Much of what I remember looks very similar to what I saw not very long ago marked made in China. Lately I have noticed a slight improvement in quality in some products coming from there and I would guess when my daughter is my age, she will shake her head when one of her kids drools over some Chinese Xeno............
Ken

rowuk

Hey y'all,
It is not just China, check out Malaysia, Taiwan, Romania. You can build these things anywhere. You can get exactly what you want - if you want to pay the 50 cents for slightly higher quality valves, you will get them on an order of 5,000 instruments.
How do we determine "good enough?

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Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

mike ansberry

Some of the chinese horns are really coming up already. The Jupiter horns (although I guess they are made on Taiwan) have improved greatly. Their student trumpets really play well. I'm anxious to see if their stainless steel valves solves the valve problem with those horns. I ordered an Arioso bass clarinet for my middle school. I'm not sure where it is made, but suspect China. It is designed by Ridenour and made from rod rubber instead of plastic. Had some really nice special key features and outplayed all the other student line bass clarinets I tried.

Really, it is getting hard to "buy American" when most of our manufacturing has left the country. You can buy a Toyota or Nissan that is built in America. You can buy a Chevy, Ford, Chrysler that is made in America from predominantly foreign made parts. The whole thing is very frustrating.

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"Music is a fire in your belly that has to come out of your mouth, so you'd better put a horn in the way before someone gets hurt" (paraphrase of Bleeding Gums Murphy)

Tootsall

Possibly not, Mike. I recall a post in one of the UK forums wherein a member who is also an employee of a larger retail operation or distributorship was posting on his visit to the Jupiter factory.... IN CHINA! Articles from the 2001/2002 Catalogue If you read about the visit you'll see that the band instrument component factory is in Tianjin... 90 miles SE of Beijing...while the assembly is in Taiwan.

This also comes from their webpage: (italics mine).