Wessex Sackbuts

[dukesboneman]

Anyone have any experience with the Wessex Tenor sackbut?
Good? Bad? Indifferent?

[BGuttman]

We had a couple of reports from Early Music specialists who claimed they weren't authentic. Maximilian Brisson comes to mind.

If you want something to hack around on and aren't going to try to resurrect the New York Pro Musica they might be OK.

Certainly you can't get anything decent anywhere near the price. Although the Nartiss might be a better choice.

[Finetales]

I was not a fan. They don't sound or feel even a little bit like a real replica. That said, if being authentic is not your goal and you just want a trombone that looks and plays a bit differently from a normal one you could certainly do a lot worse. They're not bad quality instruments...they just aren't sackbuts.

[LeTromboniste]

As Bruce mentioned, they are indeed in no way historical. They are not copied on any historical instrument, and do not appear to incorporate any historical brass instrument-making methods. They are essentially modern trombones in construction, but built in roughly the proportions of a sackbut (but the elements of a sackbut that make it truly different from a modern trombone go far beyond mere size and proportions - that is why nobody serious about early music, and I really mean nobody, plays a Wessex).

At least they are of decent build quality and are better than the Nartiss sackbuts, which are horrible, horrible instruments with extremely poor build quality and should be avoided at all costs.

Rather than rewrite an opinion I already expressed elsewhere on this forum, I'll just copy what I wrote in response to the same question last March.

I've recently had a chance again to spend a few minutes on one and it was quite a bit better than the previous ones I had tried (on which there was no way to make sound remotely like a sackbut - this one did without *too* much effort and when using a really historical mouthpiece). It did change my opinion of them favourably a little bit. In a pinch, if my horn got badly damaged right before a gig and I had access to a Wessex as a back-up, I'd use it and probably find a way to make it sound okay-ish, although I'd probably be very limited in my musicality.

However, there is a BIG caveat : a significant part of learning historical instruments lies in learning from the instrument itself and following it where it leads you, discovering how it wants to be played. And that is of tremendous importance in creating a mental distinction between the way you play your modern trombone and the way you play your sackbut (especially if you intend to play both!). There is no point of playing a sackbut in the first place if you want it to be what you're familiar with - then you could just play the music on your modern instruments (and probably sound better too). A good sackbut will make you learn from itself, and it won't respond well if you blow into it like if you were holding a modern trombone. A Wessex will do the opposite; it won't teach you anything and playing it with modern habits is not only possible but that's what the horn prefers and encourages of you.

So to make it work you need to force it to do something it doesn't want to, and for that you need to already have a very clear concept of how a sackbut is played, how it sounds, how it should feel, and quite a bit of experience playing the real thing. You can probably see the catch-22 here : if someone has that kind of experience, you can bet they already own (or have access to) a much better instrument and wouldn't consider buying this in the first place. I don't really see how somebody who's new to the instrument can progress and learn anything pertinent from playing that horn. If you wanted to attempt it, first you'd absolutely need to ditch the mouthpiece that comes with it and get yourself a proper mouthpiece, and sadly it's not something I typically see people who play on Wessex or similar "compromise" instruments do. Let's face it, who will pay $200 for a mouthpiece to put in a $700 horn?

There is starting to be some cheaper alternatives to the big names Egger and Meinl on the market. I'd recommend keeping your money, saving some more and spending it on a nicer instrument instead. I hear many good things about Brad Close's instruments (he's on this forum), and they are significantly less expensive ($2500 for a tenor).

[LeTromboniste]

Although the Nartiss might be a better choice.

No! Melting them and casting them into doorknobs would honestly be a better use of those Nartiss "instruments". Their overtone series is way off, they are barely playable and 4 out of the 5 I tried and inspected showed major defects despite being fresh out of the factory and still in their plastic wrapping (squared tubing, deep scratches in the slide plating and generally very poor slides, wrong size water key...). Those four were worth less than the brass they're made from, and the other was barely better. I certainly wouldn't encourage anyone to spend 1000$ on that.