euphonium debate

[mclaugh]

I don't agree. I would venture to say that rarely, if ever, do public school band programs buy matching sets of instruments, at least in my experience. It's just not that important a consideration for school band programs, plus, school bands tend to buy a few instruments at a time, and while most of them try to keep all their tubas the same, their euphs the same, etc, that's usually as far as it goes.

And your experience covers ___ of the 13,506 school district governments, 178 state-dependent school systems, 1,330 local-dependent school systems, and 1,196 education service agencies in the US?

[JTJ]

sungfw, I don't disagree with you. My point was slightly askew yours, and probably could have made without seeming argumentative -- which is that the brass band market is a big one, and that instrument makers are competing for market share among brass band players. The Willson Celebration line is an obvious attempt to gain such. And it will be really interesting to someday play a Willson designed with a brass band sound in mind!

John

[J Stowe]

Given that my experience is limited to the 12 years of being in band programs, teaching or coaching many programs for over 5, teaching at numerous summer camps, and observing festivals and discussing shops with public school teachers in the state of Georgia and other random schools through various conferences and performances, never have I once encountered an educator discuss the desire to have or seen a program with matching sets of concert horns; due to my observation of limited funding and hearsay of many booster programs, most public schools in the state of Georgia do not have matching horns, and I think it would be a safe best to think that most states would be in the same circumstances, give or take a few fortunate scenarios. It's just really hard to get people to issue that kind of tax money for a cause that doesn't interest enough people.

Arts are the first to go.. We know this.

[The Impaler]

And your experience covers ___ of the 13,506 school district governments, 178 state-dependent school systems, 1,330 local-dependent school systems, and 1,196 education service agencies in the US?[/quote]

Nice numbers for your first post. Completely unnecessary, but nice. To answer your question, it probably covers somewhere around 100 or so, mostly in Texas and Georgia. However, having taught in a highly-successful program in Texas that raised ridiculous amounts of money on an annual basis and completely replenished the entire program's school-owned instrument supply inside of five years, I can tell you that we were in a position that few programs are. And we rarely, if ever had a section playing all the same instruments. Directors buy what's cost-effective for their band, and most of the time have to go through a bidder/approved-vendor process to do it.

Are we done with the threadjack, or do you have more numbers for us?

[jeopardymaster]

Haven't seen mention of the old Marzan euphonium, but I'm pretty sure there are maybe a couple of posters who have them. I liked the slide config for pull but not for balance. Never owned one, though.

Also, for what it's worth, if you can track down an old Conn with short-action valves, give it a try. For wailing on marches and for stuff with lots of notes, they are hard to beat, IMO. The valve action is incredible.