Shocking comparison: Schiller(!) vs. Shires

[ghmerrill]

I'm offering this in a spirit of shocking humor, and not to be taken too seriously, but ...

Close to ten years ago I bought a Schiller (Jim Laabs Music) bass trombone with the idea of learning to play it and experiment with it until I understood what I wanted, etc. I was willing to spend the pathetically low cost on it as a kind of throw-away learning experience. Here's what I got and what I've been playing since: https://jimlaabsmusicstore.com/store/sc ... -trombone/ I notice that it's now $100 more than what I paid for it.

I made a couple of ergonomic alterations to it: replaced the silly King-style ring on the slide brace with a French horn hook on the other side of the brace (I have relatively small hands and the hook really helps hold it), and added a Bullet Brace and a counterweight. The only meaningful change was to get the leadpipe pulled, and for some time I used a (drawn) Brass Ark red brass MV50 leadpipe, but recently have switched to a nickel M/K MK 50 pipe.

More recently I've been playing in a big band, and playing a LOT more and a LOT more intensely. I haven't been totally happy with how I've been with some of the double valve notes below the staff (primarily the C and B-natural) in terms of getting them to speak well, especially at brisk tempos. So I began to wonder if I'd finally reached the point where maybe the problem was the instrument and not me.

Today I drove (through dreadful rain) up to the nearest Music & Arts shop to try out possible alternatives. They didn't have much, but they did have a Shires TBQ36YR which I'd identified as a possible replacement for the Schiller pseudo-7B. It's a beautiful instrument. I found it extremely comfortable to hold -- well balanced, and it seemed to have some kind of stock hand brace on it that worked really well, though I don't see anything of that sort in pictures on the web.

It played easily, is more comfortable to hold than the Schiller (even after my ergonomic enhancements), is clearly better made and from better materials than the Schiller, and that low C (and the B) spoke noticeably more easily. But ...

It just didn't sound as good as the Schiller -- not as rich, not the "gravitas" and "bigger sound" I can easily get out of the Schiller. In playing it, it just felt a bit "smaller". Two differences come to mind that might have this effect: (1) The leadpipe. I don't know what was in it, and I couldn't get it out. They didn't seem to have any others in the case. Perhaps a different leadpipe would have made all the difference. (2) The bell. Yellow vs. red brass. But I wouldn't have expected so much difference from the bell. I don't know.

So my final impression was "What a NICE horn! But I can't swap my Schiller for it if I lose a lot of the sound that I have on the Schiller. I guess I'll just work on those double trigger notes a bit harder." This was something of a shock. (I'm also wondering if someone might be able to open up the Schiller valves a bit without ruining them. But that's a story for another day.)

[Burgerbob]

Some of that may just be feedback- the softer bell on the Schiller lets you hear more of yourself, where the Shires is projecting.

[ghmerrill]

Interesting -- and makes sense. I guess I'd need to record the difference to be sure. But projecting more wouldn't be a bad thing.

[SteveM]

If it's projecting more, you'll hear it more, since the only sound you hear is what gets projected and bounces back to you.

[ghmerrill]

Okay, so SteveM's and Aiden's comments seem to be contradictory. I confess I'm a bit skeptical of the claim that the only sound I hear is what "bounces back". The bell is resonating right in front of my face/ears. But the projected sound that's bouncing back has to travel to the wall 20 feet away and back. When I put a mute in the bell, I still can hear it pretty well, and I'm thinking a lot of that isn't "bounce back" sound.

Can someone unravel this for me?

At our last gig the section leader said "Don't hesitate to play louder. You're getting a great bass sound out of that horn." I confess I've been holding back a bit -- mostly not to step on the vocalists or overwhelm the rest of the section sound. But when I listen to recordings I make of the band, I don't hear the bass trombone all that clearly. My wife also (at a prior gig) said "You should play louder." Would a brass bell help with this? Or is it a matter of player skill/technique?

[Burgerbob]

If it's projecting more, you'll hear it more, since the only sound you hear is what gets projected and bounces back to you.

I'd disagree. I have horns that have very little feedback, but are absolutely yeeting the sound away from you. In the right space (big room, outside) they seem like they are very quiet behind the bell.

[atopper333]

If it's projecting more, you'll hear it more, since the only sound you hear is what gets projected and bounces back to you.

Not quite sure of that…played marching trombone in an open field quite a few times and got a decent amount of feedback…

Also, playing a marching show in a dome has you contending with the sound you are hearing coming from the horn vs what is bouncing back a beat or two earlier.

Maybe I’m missing something…?

[elmsandr]

If it's projecting more, you'll hear it more, since the only sound you hear is what gets projected and bounces back to you.

I’ll throw another disagreement with this. First, I’ll just disagree with the general concept that more projecting is more that you hear. Some horns (like many 2Bs to my ears) feel like lasers, some feel omni directional, but I’d say it is a separate axis from getting feedback to my ears.

To that end, one thing is definitely is the feedback level what you are expecting. For several years (8 or so?), I was playing an Edwards bass, mostly with an unsoldered rim. I have recordings from this time… I played well, it projected fine, and the sound was very good. But I could never hear myself in a group. I ‘grew up’ on Bach style bells and with unsoldered rims I just feel weird and like I’m working my ears too hard to hear myself. I would posit that this isn’t because there is not enough feedback coming to me, but more that it is just different feedback in a balance that is not what I expect. It feels foreign to me and just drives me a little nuts.

When trying new horns; always gotta have another set of ears that you can trust. Too many things sound and feel good one place versus the other… and it needs to be both, really. If you can’t hear enough of it to make adjustments that is no better than it not sounding good in the hall.

So, I would not be surprised if it sounds fine away from you, but has a different spectrum of feedback that is just different. I also would not be surprised if the horn just doesn’t match your sound production. Some people are a LOT more sensitive to bell material. When I briefly got to see a lot of people try different horns, it was shockingly obvious if a person was going to work with a yellow vs a red bell. (For me, I know I sound better on yellow, but I just love those gold brass bells…)

Cheers,
Andy

[Crazy4Tbone86]

It is also good to take an accomplished brass musician with you. They can listen and tell you about your sound (on multiple instruments) from 25 or more feet away.

I had a couple of pro brass musician friends with me at Dillon’s (Woodbridge, NJ) many years ago. I found a horn that I thought was fantastic (1960s Holton TR-150 with a red brass bell). I asked them to listen from across the longest distance we could create (the store is not that big). I think they were possibly 20-25 feet away. They both thought that the horn was dead and muffled.

As Aiden said, some horns give the player great feedback and have little or no projection. Other horns sound dull to the player but sound great from a distance. The ultimate horn is one that has great player feedback and sounds awesome from a distance.

[ghmerrill]

I used to be able to do this well with tubas. For 20 years I played a Cerveny BBb that was red brass (a 90/10 alloy). Incredible sound, but a dent magnet. Then switched to a yellow brass compensating Eb. The thing about a tuba is it projects up -- so you really want to sit in a big auditorium or hall to get the right effect. Trombones, of course, are different, and fire the sound straight out the front.

[Lawrie]

If you've ever played a pBone you'll know that you get next to no feedback from the back of the pBone's bell. They sound quite dead. Especially when compared to a brass 'bone. Yet, they still have satisfactory, even comparable, projection and tone on the audience side when played side by side with a typical brass belled horn.
Some of you may even remember the great "Pick the pBone" challenge from about 2010 on the old TTF. The protagonists being a pBone and a 3B. I still have a recording and I still can't pick 'em. IIRC only 2 people did manage to identify them, and that only because they could hear the pBone's noisy slide.
In other words, what you hear and what the audience hears are not the same.

[Pieter]

There will be some sound you hear directly from the bell, and some reflected back from the hall. But there could also be a significant amount of sound you will hear through bone conduction. Try playing with earplugs - you will hear yourself quite a bit louder compared to others, and that difference is probably not explained by what is coming through your ear canals.

Anyway, recording yourself probably is the only way to be sure how you sound.

Is 'big' and 'with gravitas' the sound you want and need in a big band?

[ghmerrill]

Anyway, recording yourself probably is the only way to be sure how you sound.

Assuming that the recording you make is in fact an accurate representation of what the listener would hear. But I think I've got that at least reasonably close at this point -- I think.

Is 'big' and 'with gravitas' the sound you want and need in a big band?

Well, I suppose there's room for some debate here, and these words likely mean something different to different people. But I would say 'Big', yes. 'Gravitas', at times, and certainly in the sense of being deep and rich. With a bass in big band you can surprisingly often find yourself being the 4th trombone and playing passages above the 3rd. But other times, I'm playing sustained passages in the tuba range, or bass guitar. Or doing a soft solo part underneath a singer. In recent gigs I was doing stuff like playing the bass guitar part to "Jingle-bell Rock" (the bass player went down with the flu at the last minute), a low and below the staff soft solo accompaniment to a female vocal of "Christmas Time Is Here", the bass part to "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree", and parts of "Feliz Navidad" in unison with the rest of the section in the octave above the staff (with other passages in the octave below the staff). So I need a range of sounds and sound quality.

[dembones]

Assuming that the recording you make is in fact an accurate representation of what the listener would hear. But I think I've got that at least reasonably close at this point -- I think.

I agree with the comments that the difference you hear is largely feedback. Your perception of difference between horns is exaggerated compared to what others hear. And also that less bell feedback can mean more projection.

I wouldn't rely on a homemade recording, or even a professional one for that matter. I'd get feedback from knowledgeable listeners who know your sound, in a good sounding room.

[ghmerrill]

I wouldn't rely on a homemade recording, or even a professional one for that matter. I'd get feedback from knowledgeable listeners who know your sound, in a good sounding room.

I certainly understand that perspective, and can't disagree. But ...

I think I can get the homemade recording "close enough" (for my purposes) by first "calibrating it" to the sounds of other instruments (or even playback of commercial recordings) -- to the point that I'm confident that what I'm hearing in the recording is what I would hear if I were a listener in the same position. This approach has seemed to work well over the years for me with tubas, euphs, and trombones. It helped a lot when I was shifting from tuba to bass trombone and my trombone sound was pretty dreadful.

I do agree that feedback from knowledgeable listeners who know my sound, in a good room, would be extremely valuable. But that depends on (a) finding those knowledgeable listeners, (b) being able to test play the given instrument in such a room, and (c) being able to put me, the listener, the instrument, and the room together at the same time. I think that if I were a professional musician, or a university music student, I would be able to pull off that three-part conjunction. But in reality, for me, it's highly unlikely to have all of those conditions met simultaneously. The most reasonable possibility for me would be to drive up to Dillon (a full day trip in itself), spend significant time there trying out several horns, and driving back home the next day. If it gets to the point where I'm really serious about finding another horn, I'll probably do that. As it is, I'm not at the moment sufficiently motivated to take that step. For now, I'm going back to working on playing better on the equipment I have, even if that equipment is less than ideal.

[ssking2b]

I play the XO1240 RL with the sterling silver lead pipe. That has regular rotors and a rose brass bell. Yes, I’m an XO endorsed artist, but I wouldn’t play any of their stuff if it didn’t meet my standards. I have owned Conn, Shires, King, and still have 2 Holton bass bones. The XO has proven to be my overall choice. Good blend of feedback behind the horn, and it projects like crazy with a big fat sound.

Music and Arts should be able to get one in for your to try, as they are an XO dealership. They should be able to do so with out you have ping to put $$$ down on it to get it there. If you decide it’s not for you they can return it to their national stock.

[ghmerrill]

Yeah, I think M&A will do that for me. They seem pretty open to get horns in for trial. I just don't want to ask them to unless I'm really serious about buying -- which I'm not yet. Part of that is that I'd really like the tuba I have for sale at Tuba Exchange to sell before I sink a big chunk of change into a new trombone that I don't really "need".

The XO (and Jupiter) is one the primary candidates I've been looking at.