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Does anyone know if these are generally worth buying? A friend wants to buy an inexpensive [under $500] euph for his young nephew and was asking me if I knew much about these shiny ILO's. Any information will be much appreciated.

Those are instruments sold by Jim Laabs Music (out of my home state of Wisconsin). To put it mildly, Jim Laabs does not have a good reputation (IMO). If you do a search for "Jim Laabs Music" you will find a lot of information about rip-offs, poor playing instruments, customer service problems, etc. I believe there was also a thread a while back regarding this (you might want to do a search here also).

Before the "Schiller" brand the store carried "Milwaukee" brand instruments (cheap stencil horns). I went in there a few years back when I was looking to play test some new horns...the person in the store handed me a "Milwaukee" instrument and told me it was a "professional instrument" and "many pros play them" and so on (I forget some of the exact phrasing, but you get the point). Needless to say I knew better. The horn played okay at best. Schiller may be the same stencil horns with a new name on them...but I have no evidence or proof to back that up, just a hunch.

I have never played Schiller euphoniums, so I do not have much to say about the horn...but my opinion is to stay away from Jim Laabs Music.

[edit] A search on The Trombone Forum (http://www.tromboneforum.org" target="_blank) also brings up additional topics. [/edit]

There are two threads on the Tuba-Euph forum hosted on Dave Werden's website discussing the Schiller compensating euph. From the comments there, they appear to be very good horns for the money.

Cheap Euphs

Schiller Owners Near NJ-NY