I have a 10D that I bought in 1997. For a production horn, it's pretty darn good, and for those of us that can't afford to drop $7000-10,000 on a custom horn, it's a great compromise if you're looking for a Geyer-type horn. The only thing I need to do with it is change the leadpipe, for the usual reasons that players change leadpipes.
I played an 8D forever before I got to Northwestern for my graduate work. I was able to play some other horns (Lewis, Yamaha customs, etc), and realized that I was working way too hard playing an 8D. I was able to pick up a 10D for a song, so I did. John's point about getting someone else to listen to you from out in the hall is very important. If you are judging your sound from playing in band rooms or other places that are not accoustically suited for music, you're fooling yourself into thinking that things are worse than they really are. I made that mistake last fall; telling John "dude, this horn, man, I gotta change it, it sounds horrible, blah blah blah..." and he told me "no, you need to have someone else listen to you in a real hall." Once I got into a good hall, the horn blossomed with all sorts of colors that I didn't know were possible (I bought the 10D when I was in the Marines, and we didn't play in a lot of nice places). Perhaps the popularity of Conn is due to them virtually cornering the market many years ago? There's just a damn lot of them out there, and at the time there weren't that many different horns to choose from. I don't know. I just like my 10D. Gary Get Firefox!!http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/central.html _______________________________________________ post: horn@music.memphis.edu unsubscribe or set options at http://music2.memphis.edu/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
