Tootsall

Want to see something that'll make you drool? Check out this fantastic website for a GREAT new CHINESE brass instrument maker! Brought to you at no great expense by JINBAO!!!!! Next thing we know there'll be some guy signing up here and telling us we're all crazy for buying expensive North American and European trumpets and that we should be purchasing their "identical, can't tell the difference" copies that only cost $0.99 each (plus $69.95 shipping).

I get a real laugh out of their line "The primary focus of our product line is percussion woodwind, brass instruments and accessories.". That's all they're offering is percussion, woodwind, brass, and accessories!!!

http://www.jinbaomusic.com/indexe.htm

MUSICandCHARACTER

Take a look at how clean the shop is:

http://www.jinbaomusic.com/doce/jj.htm

I hate the fact that the sellers of these horns hoist them on unsuspecting parents (like .99 and $69 shipping). And the Chinese have a lot to learn about making western instruments.

A look at eBay show hundreds of these India or Chinese made horns selling for $80 to $150 new. You can't buy a decent case for that price. Yet someone is making a lot of money selling them at this price. After importing them, distributing them and those related costs, how do they sell them at $80?

If someone came and offered you a brand new car for your 16 year old kid (of course cars are regulated, instruments are not so this couldn't happen) and said, "Look, this car is just as good as a Chevy ... it has doors and tires and even an airbag ... new for only $1000." Would you want your kid driving it?

Yugo tried that ....

I keep waiting for these cheap horns to fall under their own weight. They compete against each other and the prices are going down all the time. I guess a lot of parents buy them for $100 and find out they are crap, and go a buy a real horn. Save the first $100 dollars and these guys would fall. Until then, we have to keep helping the uninitiated.

I started my website basically because of this problem. See: http://www.ibowtie.com/buyinghints.html Of course I sell ZeuS (made in the USA!) but I also help parents buy horns and try to get them to avoid wasting their money.

M&C

__________________
Dr. Jim Fox
Licensed Mental Health Therapist
Mouthpiece chart: www.ibowtie.com/tmptmpccharts.html

Tootsall

Jim, I'm surprised you are picking on Yugo! I understood that the wonderful East German automotive industry had one even better... called "Trabant". The bodies were made from something called "Duraplast" a composite made up of a Phenolic resin reinforced with cotton fibres (no....really...they were... sounds almost like formica board doesn't it?), produced more pollution than your oldest Briggs & Straton (and less power!). The car was originally supposed to be a cross between a motorcycle and a "real" car... a sort of all-purpose "people's car". (Where have I heard THAT handle before?)



There are, apparently, masochists who still try to keep these things on the road: http://home.clara.net/peterfrost/trabant.html

MUSICandCHARACTER

Very good, I had never heard them -- but from the sounds of it, I wasn't missing much but a good laugh. I picked on Yugo because after I graduated with my doctorate (way back in '86) a was dirt poor and need a car to commute 40 miles each way to my new job. I bought a Yugo, and this is how a felt after the first year

I sold it two weeks before they went bankrupt to a Chevy dealer who thought they were slamming me into a Cavalier. When the Yugo with only 12,000 miles on it went from being worth $4000 to parts overnight, the Cavalier was a good deal! Ah, back in the days of being young.

My friends, bless their hearts, bought me personalized Colorado license plates that said "IMADOC" for getting my PhD. I hated them (the plates not my friends) but to honor my friends, I put them on my car. Great -- a Yugo with "IMADOC" on the plates. Some nice looking girls came by one day when I was buying gas and said, "If you are a Doc, what's with the Yugo?" It was a good question.

I had a sign made that said "I am paying my student loans" and put it in the back window. That helped some.

Chinese and India horns

M&C

__________________
Dr. Jim Fox
Licensed Mental Health Therapist
Mouthpiece chart: www.ibowtie.com/tmptmpccharts.html

Clarino

http://www.jinbaomusic.com/doce/cp2.htm

Check it out, a C Flat tuba! WTF?!

MUSICandCHARACTER

Ed

"Eclipse MR/gp (hung up in Canada Customs)"

That has to be frustrating!

M&C

__________________
Dr. Jim Fox
Licensed Mental Health Therapist
Mouthpiece chart: www.ibowtie.com/tmptmpccharts.html

Tootsall

Jim...it is. I'm about to change it though... watch below!

(And the bureaucrats wonder why trade is stifled and economies are going flat.... WAKE UP YOU CLOWNS... A 6 DAY DELIVERY HAS NOW TAKEN TWO WEEKS!!!!!!)

MUSICandCHARACTER

Oh .... I hope you feel better. If I lived closer to you I would be glad to give a few free sessions

I sent a trombone to a gentleman in London. This was a couple months ago when all those flights from London were being cancelled. 4 to 7 days priority mail. Nearly 20 days later it was delivered. Your delay is probably due to all the discussion we have had about the Eclipse being a "weapon."

M&C

__________________
Dr. Jim Fox
Licensed Mental Health Therapist
Mouthpiece chart: www.ibowtie.com/tmptmpccharts.html

W Scott

Ed,
I read one of the ads for Jinbao on E-Bay and they are claiming that the horns are actually made by an American manufacturer for them! Of course, because of contract stipulations they can't reveal who the manufactuer is---but just look at the pretty trumpet and how good the workmanship is..........

I wanted to puke! I'd love to wrap one of those horns around someones' neck because that is about all these cheap Chinese pieces of junk are worth. And yet, folks just keep on buying them.................

__________________
Gabriel is NOT a woodwind player!

Tootsall

I'd take you up on the free lessons.... as long as they had something to do with trumpet playing! I know that the horns have cleared Customs... either Friday or today... so they should arrive here Wed? and that means I'll get a notice Wed. to pick them up on Thursday..... with ANY luck and hopefully the Postal workers don't go on strike in the meantime.

Oh... Will... if you look at the photos on the front page (photos of the factory)...


tell me what Americans would work in a place like that? Sterile, utilitarian, conformist.... compare those photos with some of Leigh's shop. If someone on EBAY is claiming those horns are made in North America perhaps someone else should be exposing them to the Ebay people for false claims? I know there's usually a half dozen "reveals" going on over in TH with Ebay stuff. I found this site because they actually had put the link to the factory site into their EBAY ad!