rdt1959

I received the Wild Thing yesterday. My wife called me at the office at about 3:00 pm and said it had arrived. And of course, my boss had the audacity to make this the ONE Friday in a month that he has not left the office early!

I haven't really put the horn through it's paces yet, but wanted to write down my first impressions.

The first thing I noticed was how absolutely beautiful the horn is! A wonderful finish on the Wild Thing.

Also evident immediately was the wieght of the horn. Much lilghter and better balanced than what I am used to.

The valves are extremely responsive.

As Mike said, I was concerned if I could handle the large bore. But I stopped worrying about that from the first note! I started with the No. 1 slide.

What a beautiful sound! It is hard to explain I guess, but the Wild Thing gives me a full, rich sound that is somehow brilliant at the some time. I noticed the same thing that Mike did about the articulation too. My tonguing is much cleaner on the Wild Thing using the No. 1 slide. Slotting is extremely good. I find the my percision during sip slurring exercises is much better on the Wild Thing than on my regular horn. It didn't extend my pratical range any (does that really surprise anybody?), but my tone in the upper register is MUCH better on the Wild Thing.

Then I tried out the No. 2 slide. UGH!

Not sure why, but I find the No. 2 slide much harder to play on. I will have to explore that a little bit and figure out why. My tone is still better than my regular horn, but nothing like my tone on the No. 1 slide.

So far have have nothing but positive things to say about the Wild Thing, with one exception that is probably peculiar to me. I am very very careful when changing the slides. The clearance between the bell and the fully extended slide is very tight. Being somewhat of a klutz (aren't all engineer's clumsy?), I can easily see myself scratch the slide and/or the bell if I tried to change the slide too quickly (i.e. during a gig).

That about sums things up for now. As I work with the horn I will be keep a mini-journal so that I can post more thoughts later in the week.

Many many thanks go out to Tom and Flip for making this possible.

trptbenge

Dick,

That is what I found too with the number 2 slide. I could not get the same feel or sound from it. What a great horn though!

Mike

rdt1959

I spent the weekend mowing our acreage and playing the Wild Thing. OK...I will admit that I spent more time with the Wild Thing than with the mower. I am a big believer in the value of constructive criticism. If you don't know what the problem is, you can't fix it, right? But try as hard as I can, I can't find anything negative to say about the Wild Thing with the No. 1 slide.

It produces a beautiful tone. Everybody that I have played for has commented on the tone of this trumpet.

Somebody in a previous review mention the flat metal finger pads. I noticed these right off and thought they looked a bit different. I am surprised and how fast I have gotten use to them, and how comfortable they actually feel on the fingers.

I am handling the large bore just fine. As I play the horn more in the higher register, I am finding that it does indeed take more air to produce the sound I want up there. Maybe better breath control is a better way to describe it. I find with the larger bore that I really have to support my air flow from the gut more. That is not a bad thing either, because when I concentrate on proper breathe control I find the I can get the same tone quality playing C above the staff as second line G.

However, I will say that I still have trouble handling the horn with the No. 2 slide in. It is just harder to play, and I don't care for the tone quality that I produce with that slide. But I can definitely see why some people would want to change the slides for different types of music or different settings.