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Chinese instrument quality was questionable 20 years ago, but now they are selling some "world class" instruments along with plenty of "good" horns.
Indian instrument quality was atrocious 20 years ago. Why have they not made the strides that China has?

Why doesn't India execute people by firing squad and bill their family for the bullets? Who knows. It's just a very different place. Someone who wants to get into the musical instrument business could try it out - contract with a factory to build instruments to specifications, market them in the 1st world with a European name. My guess is that it would be a catastrophe, even for someone who could manage the cultural issues, because there isn't the modern larger industrial plant environment that the Chinese govt has fostered. So everything you need would have to be built from raw materials, or imported from China; every skill you need would have to be trained from the ground up, or imported from China. Same applies to making anything anywhere else. I've never made tubas myself, though, so could be full of it.

The way those instruments were labeled isn't too far from how they label them on eBay.

Just saying -- those Indian people seem perfectly content playing those instruments. Maybe that's probably why there's no changes made to them.

The reason might be found at 1:14 in the video where, while mentioning all the instruments, when the euphonium is mentioned there is a picture of a cornet!

bloke wrote:I hadn't thought about it in a long time, but I just remembered those quasi-counterfeit/not-fooling-anyone "Bessons" instruments from over a decade ago.

I remember an eBay ad around 2000 that had an "authentic Selman."

"Don't fall for those counterfeit brands," it said, "and buy yourself an authentic Selman!"

brianf wrote:The reason might be found at 1:14 in the video where, while mentioning all the instruments, when the euphonium is mentioned there is a picture of a cornet!

Well, to be fair, he says "trumpets ... cornets ... ", while the video shows a trumpet, a pocket trumpet and a cornet. The cornet is on the screen when the narration says "euphonium", and then if I'm not mistaken the euphonium is on the screen when the narration says "tubas". The video editor probably threw out the tuba picture at that point, having run out of narrated instruments. So their mistake is the pocket trumpet, and they're not the first to make that mistake.

It's almost like different peoples have different abilities, habits, and inclinations. Not quite, but almost.

Somehow, if/ as long as the companies’ current business models work (someone is buying shiny garbage), they do not have pressure to change.

If someone you know buys junk, slap them. Just to be a friend.
But you can’t punish a company except by not
buying. But okay to keep up with publicly ridicule!

Has anyone found any of these with enough redeeming qualities to take apart and reassemble ?

Some of their motorcycles aren't bad. Royal Enfields were exactly the same as 50's models years ago, but now have unit engine construction and fuel injection. This was probably driven at least partially by emission standards. I had a Bajaj Chetak 4-stroke scooter that was extremely reliable, but the scooters are now phased out because the Indian public wants small motorcycles. Baja makes fine small motorcycles that are not imported to the US.

We see a lot of high end cars, SUV's and pickups selling, lots of profit in those versus a Yaris.

I think it might be simply that those companies in India are selling a lot of instruments at the lower price point and making money. Some manufacturers have a rep for quality and can get a high margin on fewer instruments. Why change?

Do any instruments come out of Korea or Taiwan? That seems be a place where there is a good quality for the $$ ratio on many goods.

Taiwan, yes - and (I think) significantly, Taiwanese brands. Jupiter (KHS), Carol Brass, etc. In the low end of the market, they'll put factories in the cheaper places, just like Koreans do - low end Jupiter in China, Korean Samick's factory in Indonesia - but they make the good stuff in Taiwan under their own name, unlike Samick which as far as I can tell produces little in Korea, they're just based there.

That decision to stake a reputation on a brand is, to me, where it starts to matter who made what. I see reports that someone looked at some Selmer budget line saxophone and saw "made in Korea" ... because you can pick those factories up and move them to wherever, and they swung a deal in Korea at one point. Who cares.

BrassedOn wrote:But okay to keep up with publicly ridicule!

Not always: https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stor ... ily10.html" target="_blank

We all know First Act is awful, but they successfully sued Brooks Mays for calling them "instrument shaped objects."

Some school districts will also come down very hard on teachers who steer students away from these awful brands. It's crazy how they can make crap, and then get the courts to say we're not allowed to tell students they're crap.

It's a really different culture. About the polar opposite of the German/Swiss culture. My company ordered some power transformers (extra high voltage etc, not toys) from a company that had just opened a factory in India. Intensive training was done and criteria met. But when the transformers arrived, they all failed, and this was not an unsubstantial amount of money, and it put in jeopardy those utilities who had ordered those transformers, because it was going to be more than a year before they had a second chance to install one. In the culture as I understand it, getting certified is a formality that does not imply that the standard will continue. And so after the certification is complete, everything goes back the way it was before. That doesn't work very well with EHV power transformers. There is a total mismatch between cultures of expectd standards and quality. It IS cultural. I still remember reading of some British people who had arrived in India and were invited to someone's house for dinner the following Thursday. They accepted, and on Thursday started out for the people's house. The people just didn't know what to do with the fact that the British were actually coming and expecting to eat dinner. What had been a courteous exchange for the Indians was taken as literal by the British.