Edwards T-396 w/ .525" slide?

[sterb225]

Been meaning to ask this for a while. Has anyone tried a .525" slide with the Edwards Alessi T-396 bell section? I love the idea, but haven't had the opportunity to try it and really can't justify buying a new slide for an experiment. My goal would be to have the horn feel and sound lighter for pit orchestra and chamber settings.

[paulyg]

I have a dual-bore Edwards tenor slide (.525/.547) that I might sell you at a pretty good price...

[Kdanielsen]

I use a 525 edwards slide on my t350 HB (axial, rose, 321cf) from time to time and it works well. Im not wild about the edwards 525 leadpipes though. I’d love to try a brass ark or something but haven’t had the money to buy one lately.

FYI Edwards has stopped producing 525 slides.

[whitbey]

I play a 525/547 slide on my sterling bell Edwards for solo, practice and quintet. Sometimes I use the 547/562 slide on this horn.

I also use a 547/562 slide with my brass bell Edwards for orchestra and band.

I expect a 525 single bore would be just fine also. I think the horns are more versatile and capable of variables beyond reasonable and still work just fine.

Because I have a valve on my jazz horn the receiver is the same. So I can put my 500/508 slide on the big horn and the big slide on the small horn. Sounds ok. Plays funny, but not as funny as I would expect.

I think the small slide on the big horn blows like a German horn I tried with a small slide and a big bell.

If crazy gets by, you should have no problem.

[sterb225]

Bumping this post. I’ve started playing with a quintet recently. In the past my modular stable had multiple bells, slides, valves, etc. I’ve been symphony only for many years and love my fixed config Alessi. I added a Griego Aleasi 1B, but still feel like my sound is too much. The goal is to leverage my T-396 by adding a slide or bell section for chamber instead of a complete second horn.

[Matt K]

I haven't tried it on the 396, but I have been using a 525 and 525/547 slide on a few Getzen bell sections recently. On paper, my bell sections are similar to the 396, minus the fancy bells and whistles of course. I don't see a lot of second hand 525 or 525/547 slides come up but the combo works really well on the Getzen/Edwards bells in my experience. The small shank leadpipe with Doug's 4 shanks (or potentially some new special stuff he's working on!!) are basically everything you want out of a large bore but with half as much effort.

[harrisonreed]

Bumping this post. I’ve started playing with a quintet recently. In the past my modular stable had multiple bells, slides, valves, etc. I’ve been symphony only for many years and love my fixed config Alessi. I added a Griego Aleasi 1B, but still feel like my sound is too much. The goal is to leverage my T-396 by adding a slide or bell section for chamber instead of a complete second horn.

Just out of curiosity, what settings and what rooms/spaces do you feel like you're overpowering the group? All the time, wherever? Or, only in smaller spaces?

[norbie2018]

Can't the pillars be used to solve this issue? I ask this because I was recently at the Edwards factory sampling their trombones and the gentleman helping me mentioned he used a pillar to help him out in a small ensemble situation. I believe he stated his sound was overtaking the ensemble and by adding a pillar it dialed things down. I know it was copper but don't know anything else about it.

[harrisonreed]

Can't the pillars be used to solve this issue?

Possibly. I use the long copper one on the middle hole, extending towards the tuning slide. Depending on the room I'm in, I will adjust it.

In a concert hall, I have it extended all the way out, and the perception is that the response is way out in the hall. Lots of projection and not a lot of work to do it.

In a small room or dead room, I will screw the long pillar in. It depends on the room, but sometimes all the way in. This makes the response and sound feel much closer, almost in the bell rather than 50 ft away. It feels a lot more "open", which is great when the room is giving you nothing.

Both of those are just attempts to get the response feeling easy, which in turn makes dynamics more about the air and less about the face. Everyone probably knows the feeling, you gotta practice in a tiny room and suddenly the easy pp dynamic you just had in the hall is not even speaking. "Why is my face tightening up?". I find that screwing that thing in makes it so that it's like, "ah, okay I'm getting easy sound now again"

It's kind of why I asked my question above -- I think it can be easy to make equipment choices that are great for where we rehearse or practice, but not so great for where we perform. I wonder sometimes if people are on deep 3Gs and 4Gs because those mouthpieces make playing in the practice room and professor's office easier. You're trying to get the sound and response of a concert hall, and the recordings you have in your head, in a tiny room. And then you get used to it in performance and that's what you take forward as a high level professional.

[Blabberbucket]

FYI Edwards has stopped producing 525 slides.

Wouldn't be too difficult to have someone built an Edwards-compatible .525 slide or modify from another manufacturer.

[sterb225]

I feel like my sound is too heavy for the quintet - the setting impacts my perception of the issue (small dead vs. large reverberant), not the reality. When I listen back to our rehearsals or gigs, I wish that my sound was more colorful relative to the other instruments.

My pillars
Bell Side - short stainless pointing up (2 grooves)
Middle - empty
Neck Side - short copper pointing down (1 groove)
I haven't messed with the pillars as a solution - but I will try some other combos with the 1B before our next rehearsal. It's definitely worth a try and I'll use your setup as the starting point.

Before abandoning modular horns for the 396, I had 525, 547, 547/562, and 562 slides (factory and custom builds), along with a collection of bell, tuning slide, and valve options at my fingertips. I wish I still had that 525 Edwards slide!

Harrison - I get what you're saying about choosing what makes things easier 95% of the time while being wholly wrong in the hall, which is where it really counts. It took over a year of cycling through options on the 396 without getting the sound I needed in the big room before finding success with the 1C (I was convinced there was no way my amateur face could play the same thing as Big Joe!).

[sterb225]

And having said all of that above - anyone with an Edwards or Shires 525 gathering dust?

[sterb225]

Can't the pillars be used to solve this issue?

Possibly. I use the long copper one on the middle hole, extending towards the tuning slide. Depending on the room I'm in, I will adjust it.

In a concert hall, I have it extended all the way out, and the perception is that the response is way out in the hall. Lots of projection and not a lot of work to do it.

In a small room or dead room, I will screw the long pillar in. It depends on the room, but sometimes all the way in. This makes the response and sound feel much closer, almost in the bell rather than 50 ft away. It feels a lot more "open", which is great when the room is giving you nothing.

Both of those are just attempts to get the response feeling easy, which in turn makes dynamics more about the air and less about the face. Everyone probably knows the feeling, you gotta practice in a tiny room and suddenly the easy pp dynamic you just had in the hall is not even speaking. "Why is my face tightening up?". I find that screwing that thing in makes it so that it's like, "ah, okay I'm getting easy sound now again"

It's kind of why I asked my question above -- I think it can be easy to make equipment choices that are great for where we rehearse or practice, but not so great for where we perform. I wonder sometimes if people are on deep 3Gs and 4Gs because those mouthpieces make playing in the practice room and professor's office easier. You're trying to get the sound and response of a concert hall, and the recordings you have in your head, in a tiny room. And then you get used to it in performance and that's what you take forward as a high level professional.

I finally tried some pillar movement tonight and having left my setup static for years, I am surprised at the immediate impact changes have on the horn. I agree that the long pillar in the middle impacts perceived projection as you described. I went back and forth between copper and stainless and preferred the stainless for the more focused sound and crisper attacks that I am chasing for quintet. I'll give both a try in some rehearsals now that I have some sense of the impacts.

[ZacharyThornton]

You can absolutely order a .525 slide from Edwards.

[harrisonreed]

I finally tried some pillar movement tonight and having left my setup static for years, I am surprised at the immediate impact changes have on the horn. I agree that the long pillar in the middle impacts perceived projection as you described. I went back and forth between copper and stainless and preferred the stainless for the more focused sound and crisper attacks that I am chasing for quintet. I'll give both a try in some rehearsals now that I have some sense of the impacts.

I'm glad you tried it out. FWIW, my exact setup is the long copper pillar, as described above (changing depth depending on the room), and the "2" copper pillar in the bell side, out towards the bell (opposite direction of the long pillar). Nothing in the first hole. I can get the response feeling just like I want in almost any room, and I find that this setup lets you really push the horn without it immediately lighting up.

The negative with the pillars, especially after you learn how they affect the response and how to get reliable results with them, is that you may have to choose between sound and how easy they make it to play. I have found a couple setups that make the thing slot like Las Vegas but they don't sound good. I tried one setup with a very long and heavy steel screw that made the horn articulate and slot easier than anything I've ever tried, and even sounded good, but it was like everything was one dynamic only, just FFF.