brag/rant

[Bob Kolada]

Did you sell him a cr@ck pipe, too.

No no, he said he DIDN'T sell him a saxophone.

[Donn]

Rico reeds have been more usable for me than Vandoren, but that's all in the past. Cane reeds are not so bad for smaller saxophones, but the bigger reeds you need for bari sax and up are not worth the hassle. Buy a synthetic reed, get what you pay for, use it for months if not years.

[PMeuph]

That seems like sound advice to me.

_______
I was at a brass band festival this weekend. There where two reps from Yamaha who were there to showcase the "Neo" line. All the horns there where part of that line except for the YEB-632s. They were trying to clear it, so it was priced at $5200. I have rarely seen a salesmen try to schmooze so many people into buying that horn. I actually liked the horn, and probably would have liked to spend more time at the table trying it out as well as some trombones and a euph, but the salesmen was so full of crap.

[Eflatdoubler]

I see this all the time with my students. One of my HS freshman kids has a Yamaha Allegro with F attachment large shank trombone. The local music store told his mother that he would need a more professional horn( and even said he would need a large shank trombone!). The horn he has is quite good and I told him to stick with what he has. This kid is lucky if he can play three scales right in a row no less sound better on any instrument.
It is amazing how some band directors and music store reps get kids and families to "drink the kool-aid"


@bloke- Nice to hear a story with honest people!

[steve_decker]

...but if I cheat people, aren't they going to find out eventually - if not fairly soon...??

Though you would like to think so, one look at recent elections (local, state, and national) would quickly prove otherwise.

[ralphbsz]

The job of advising a student what instrument (and accessories like mouthpiece, reed, ...) to buy should go to a teacher. Ideally a private teacher, since the school band director doesn't have time for half hour 1-on-1 sessions with each student (not with typically over 200 students per teacher). But that's not always possible. Sometimes, parents, school volunteers, or music store staff can help out. If that doesn't work, we end up with good students being held back by playing junk instruments, or by great instruments being wasted on inexperienced students, or parents wasting lots of money by having to replace instruments regularly. School music programs that can afford to provide loaner instruments help somewhat (my son's middle school is in that fortunate position, for the most part), but that's not possible everywhere: rich areas don't need loaners, and poor areas can't do enough fundraising to afford them. Matter-of-fact, our school band boosters are right now buying a second full-size 4-valve tuba, because my son has been playing our own MW25, and he's graduating to high school in 6 weeks.

In this case described above, it worked out good, because bloke (and Mrs. Bloke) acted as teachers, and instead of selling the family a $1500 toy, gave them good advice and sold them a $30 box of reeds, which is probably going to work out much better. On behalf of all band parents: Thank you bloke.

Little anecdote with a happy end: Our 6th grade beginning band has a shy young clarinet player, who really needs improvement. He couldn't get any decent sound out of the clarinet, and was getting frustrated. So much so, he wanted to quit band next school year, which would have lost our music boosters a great volunteer. Finally, he worked up the courage to go see the band director 1-on-1. The teacher took one look at the clarinet, and adjusted the reed: it was completely in the wrong place. Suddenly, he sounds great. The kid is happy, he's practicing at home, he's coming back to band again next year, and he is even talking about doing the audition for jazz band or advanced band. All it took was 5 minutes, and $0.