Neptune wrote:How does the Fasolt compare in overall size against Fafner? Any comparison photos?
No photos. But it's bigger. Sitting next to a Yorkbrunner, it had the same fatness, with another five or six inches of height. If you know what that entails in terms of the taper, you'll get that it is a really large instrument. The Fafner is more like a Rudy 5/4, mapping more to a Gronitz PCK-size instrument (near 6/4) than to the real Yorkophones and Holtons.
Roger's assessment mirrors my own. I could not get a sense, in the Elephant Room melee, of the finer points of its tone color, but it seemed to me not excessively woofy, at least with the Sellmansberger Symphony I was using. It was quite playable. With the Rudy 6/4 (which is bigger still), the expectation is that it will sound cavernous--huge and hollow--and it surprises when it doesn't. You begin to think silly thoughts, like "I could actually play this thing." With the Fasolt, the expectation is that it will play well, and it does. You begin to think dangerous thoughts, like "how many house payments can I skip before they take my house away from me."
For a finer judgment than that, I would need to spend some quality time with it, comparing it alongside my Holton, in a quiet room.
And don't let Roger kid you--he probably could have irritated Richard with an accurate rendering of Bydlo on that instrument.
Rick "who would want to assess how well it plays
softly" Denney
