Link. Pic attached to this post. Left to right, it's a gold plated Buescher straight Bb soprano (sn 185950; 1926), a gold plated Yamaha 6x6 G custom Eb alto (sn 1009; appx 1980), and a lacquer Selmer Mark VI Eb alto (sn 139169; 1966).
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I've laid out my feelings on ascribing too much value to an instrument that was owned by a famous player in other threads. A quick summary is: you're not $famous_player and you're not going to sound like him/her unless you put the time and effort in -- and it might take you an awful lot more time than me or vice-versa (OK, generally vice-versa). Additionally, just because a famous player happened to play on a particular instrument -- or have his name engraved on an instrument (e.g. the Rudy Wiedoeft model from Holton) -- doesn't mean that that instrument's even good. He/she might be so talented that he/she can compensate for all the horn's problems. You might not be.
Tl;Dr: So, why bother?
To partially answer my question before she knew I asked it, Helen wrote a blog article a few weeks ago about being "caretakers" of our horns, as some horns will outlive us. I had initially thought about it as me passing down my horn(s) to my kids or grandkids. If I had any horns and if I had kids or grandkids that wanted to play, of course.
It makes me kind of wonder what happened to the horns owned by some of the more famous players. I'd like to think that some are still in use and not just in a museum.
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I've laid out my feelings on ascribing too much value to an instrument that was owned by a famous player in other threads. A quick summary is: you're not $famous_player and you're not going to sound like him/her unless you put the time and effort in -- and it might take you an awful lot more time than me or vice-versa (OK, generally vice-versa). Additionally, just because a famous player happened to play on a particular instrument -- or have his name engraved on an instrument (e.g. the Rudy Wiedoeft model from Holton) -- doesn't mean that that instrument's even good. He/she might be so talented that he/she can compensate for all the horn's problems. You might not be.
Tl;Dr: So, why bother?
To partially answer my question before she knew I asked it, Helen wrote a blog article a few weeks ago about being "caretakers" of our horns, as some horns will outlive us. I had initially thought about it as me passing down my horn(s) to my kids or grandkids. If I had any horns and if I had kids or grandkids that wanted to play, of course.
It makes me kind of wonder what happened to the horns owned by some of the more famous players. I'd like to think that some are still in use and not just in a museum.
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