Love at First Sound

I have a new love in my life, and it's a shiny new Yamaha trombone.

Last weekend our brass quintet was invited to play at the Yamaha Wind Expo at Times Square. We'd been using their concert hall for our practices for free; now we were helping them back. Because they were having quite a number of new instruments for display during the expo, they offered to let us play a couple of them during our performance. A nice little marketing scheme, I must say - why just display it when you can have people actually hear it as well?

Now I've been looking around for a new instrument for some time. I've been playing the YSL-354 student-model trombone for the last four years, and I've been told numerous times that it was time to change to a better, more suitable instrument. (the YSL-354 is a small-bore trombone, with a voice that cuts through sheer rock - which isn't what you want if you're going to play in a concert band or symphony orchestra because then it'll squash all the violins). I'd already tried out the YSL-691 which, alas, was a jazz trombone, and the new Xeno, which would have been an appropriate horn had it not been for the fact that it seemed to hate me right from the beginning.

So, with the bad experience with the Xeno fresh in my memory, I wasn't exactly keen when I was offered the Yamaha YSL-682G professional large-bore trombone. I didn't want to have to play a cold, new instrument that hadn't been seasoned; moreover a trombone whose bore was a radical 1 cm + bigger than my own. (so was the Xeno's - I couldn't get a single decent note out of the damned thing) At any rate, I gamely decided that there wouldn't be any harm trying the instrument out.

Friday night, sound check at Times Square. We'd just gotten settled down and started our second horn trio when Peter brought in the YSL-682G. I would've happily carried on playing my 354, but then choruses of 'Why don't you try out the new instrument?' led me to pick up the 682. The first note came out so sour it could've curdled milk. Ack. So I tried again. And the second note came out clear and crisp - a luxury that the Xeno had denied me. I took it a little further and tried my scales. The notes came out clean and beautiful. Tried several harmonic series, and then our second trio. It was beautiful.

The amazing thing was that if there was any additional physical effort playing the new instrument, I didn't realise it. It was so accessible, so readily responsive, and had such an honest full-bodied voice that I fell madly in love on the spot. That was basically the moment I decided I had to have the instrument.

The sales deal was sealed the very next day, and the money arrived in Yamaha's coffers on Tuesday. And today.... the instrument was delivered right to my doorstep. Absolute heaven.