<p>Violadad, remember, I have the pianist…I take your strings and raise it one Steinway! ;)</p>
<p>My take is different on purchasing or renting a trumpet. It depends on the deal you get, of course, but chances are your son will stick with it for AT LEAST some amount of time (6 months+?). It’s possible that 6 months of rental will have paid off at least half of a brand new trumpet. Even if you gave up the trumpet at that point, chances are you’d get back at least half of what you’d paid for it. With a rental, you get nothing.</p>
<p>My son also rented a trumpet, beginning in 5th grade. He had the choice of renting a used one, or, for a little more, a new one. Payments did go toward buying the trumpet. The one he got was really quite nice for a student trumpet. By the time he finished 8th grade, he owned the trumpet and used it another year before buying a better one.</p>
<p>It is definitely true that instruments get banged up in grade school bands. My son would often complain about other students banging their instruments into his and similar occurrences. We were glad he did not have an expensive instrument at that time.</p>
<p>Susan, We did the same thing. And son’s second trumpet was very nice; he used it mainly for concerts and competitions, and practiced on it at home. It mostly stayed at home, the crappy one stayed in the band room at school. </p>
<p>Before he had the second one, he’d have to take the crappy one home with him, and during baseball season it would be in the dugout with him in the afternoons after school. The other players would take it out of the case and honk away at it during practice!</p>
<p>Allmusic,
Do you have a Steinway? My MIL has one that’s 100 years old!
I have a 6’ mahogany Petrof grand. I love it love it love it.
When I was shopping for my piano, I tried out a Bosendorfer, which was ridiculously out of my price range for a home piano, but I found the Petrof played just like it, and sounded very similar as well. It’s a little ‘harder’ to play than most, which gives some students fits, but it has such a beautiful sound. I tell them, if you can play this on my piano, you can play it on any piano! I’m not sure Petrof’s are being imported into the US anymore.</p>
<p>kathiep–if you encouraged your sons to take up “lower” brass instruments, you could have a nice family ensemble!</p>
<p>Piano owners–I may have you beat. We have a 125 year old Bechstein which belonged to my H’s grandfather. It’s a beautiful instrument, fully restored about 25 years ago. No way could we have afforded it new!</p>
<p>I’ve played on a Petrof–very stiff action. I remember thinking “Is this some sort of endurance test?” Whew.</p>
<p>I agree the student should test the instrument him/herself, but don’t think an 8 year old beginner has the capacity to judge if it’s the instrument or the player that’s having trouble! </p>
<p>Renting seems to be the way to go, and you shouldn’t have to pay for the use of an instrument that doesn’t work.</p>
<p>My aplogogies to the piano owners. Indeed a good piano equates anywhere from a “great” car to a second mortgage payment. Or, funding college ;)</p>
<p>DP, yes we do have a Steinway; I loved the one I grew up playing, and really hoped to have one for my son one day. We replaced our first piano, a Baldwin spinet, with a Steinway B. We bought it from a piano restorer we know, who bought it from an old lady, where it had sat for 40 years as furniture. It is a wonderful instrument, and is now “broken in” (which took a few years–it was quite stiff when we got it, but had lovely sound) and well played.</p>
<p>We have friends with a Bosendorfer. Although the Bose is nice, I like the action and sound of our Steinway better. I haven’t played on a Petrof, but I have found pianos are very personal. Some people like a stiffer action, or a brighter sound, or whatever. Some just like pianos as furniture, and then it doesn’t matter what the piano sounds like (they can just get a Chinese grand for $5K and call it a day)! LOL!</p>
<p>I have played on some old Bechsteins, MM! Now they often have amazing sound!</p>
<p>“I’ve played on a Petrof–very stiff action. I remember thinking “Is this some sort of endurance test?” Whew.”</p>
<p>mommusic, LOL!
At the time I was “Picking Out” my piano, I was also doing a lot of performing, and I absolutely HATED going from my old Yamaha, which played very easily, to some venue that had a hard-to-play piano! I’d just become a head case! At the time, I was working on Liszt’s La Campanella, which is pretty much an endurance contest in and of itself, and I went around to the various piano shops using that piece as my “gauge”. I figured I’d have them all beat if I could whip it out on a Petrof!</p>
<p>Since this thread is already changing topics… How can you tell what kind of piano you have? My piano (upright) was originally bought by my grandparents for my mother, when she took piano lessons, thus back in the '30’s sometime, and passed along to me when I took lessons. I think it used to have a label on front, but my dad refinished it long, long ago, so that is gone. Is there another place to look? I doubt this was anything expensive, but I am curious now.</p>
<p>We’ve been to the local instrument shop, and we’re back with a brand-new Jupiter 660 trumpet, 5 month rental for a lower monthly cost than the bad trumpet (hope I can get a refund). I pushed in the valves, and they worked smoothly and bounced back. Completely different than the other rental. My son tried “playing” it, and it sounded much better. The old one was inconsistent. The rental fees will be applied to the purchase of a new instrument (not even the new one we have, another new one) if we decide to buy within the 5 months. </p>
<p>I’m happy to change the subject to pianos. I’m envying all of you your interesting pianos. My son is begging for a Steinway (he occasionally gets to play one and loves it). We did not have a piano when he started two years ago, so he started on a keyboard and within a few months we bought a slightly used Yamaha upright. It has a very nice sound, I think. I liked it better than the other Yamahas we listened to.</p>
<p>susan,
Have you looked under the lid?</p>
<p>doubleplay, I haven’t yet. I will try. It is a bit hard to get to the back to look there or open the lid, because of the way the piano is situated in an alcove, but I will try. Thanks for the suggestion! (I know it was probably a dumb question; I should have tried pulling it out and looking inside…)</p>
<p>On a grand the makers mark is usually on the soundboard, I’m not sure about an upright. I’d think it would be somewhere in there, though. Ask a technician next time you get it tuned?</p>
<p>uh, dumb me, it opens from the front! OK, I just checked. It is Lester Piano Company, Philadelphia and Lester, Pennsylvania. It also says inside that it comes with a ten year guarantee–well, that is long past! I will do some research online to find out more. :)</p>
<p>YAAAYYY! One problem solved, 10 million more to go…</p>
<p>Re: trumpets…whatever you buy should have monel piston valves (I’m sure I don’t have that spelled correctly). Many student models do not have this valve type and they stick and do all sorts of odd things (including break…likely what happened to the OP’s kid’s first rental). It’s worth the extra money to get good valves. They are second only to your lips in creating the correct pitch on a trumpet. Even my son’s junky student trumpet had this type of valve. And since we’re talking about OT stuff…a good case is also essential. Lightweight and durable are the two things you need to have. We have a piano also…but nothing fancy. It’s a Kawai console, and we love it.</p>
<p>Rental trumpets:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>WashMom rents trumpet for TallSon in 5th grade. He loves playing, by we aren’t convinced. Rental (including destruction insurance) is about $20 per month. The price of a couple of movie tickets per month seems nominal.</p></li>
<li><p>Sometime in 7th grade the trumpet has some weird problem. It goes back to the rental shop for repair. The guy there says, “We rented you this Bach? For that much money?” TallSon gets a loaner (some name I’d never heard of) which TallSon says sounds bad. A month later the first trumpet comes back from repair (since it takes a month, I figure it was repaired in Guam or Greenland), and TallSon plays both the loaner and the Bach for me in the store. The clerk says, “You could just keep the loaner if you want.” The loaner sounds awful. We keep the Bach.</p></li>
<li><p>That summer, we visit my father, who is a lifelong trumpet player, who used to play in a swing band, and in orchestras and bands in high school and college. At 71 he still performs in public once in a while – not a professional, but a talented amateur. His own horn is a Chicago Benge. He played TallSon’s Bach and proclaimed that is “a nice horn.” I’m not an expert, but it sounded pretty close to the Benge.</p></li>
<li><p>TallSon is too musically unfocused to be great at one instrument right now (trumpet, lead guitar, jazz guitar, French horn, and – for one concert – tuba), but he played trumpet this last year in three Jr. High bands. He’s still serious, even if he’s not serious, if you get my drift.</p></li>
<li><p>We paid off the rental. We’ve paid about $1,200 in rental fees over five years for a horn that is probably worth less than that, but it never cost much at once, and it seems like it’s good enough to last him through high school at least.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Are Bachs generally pretty good horns? My dad likes this one OK, so we’ll keep it, but I do wonder…</p>
<p>My son has been playing his new rental trumpet. It is amazing what a difference it has made. I can tell that he’s playing music (although not well). With the first trumpet, it did not sound like music.</p>
<p>I think this trumpet does have the morel valves (not that I know what that means!)</p>
<p>Wash Dad,
All I know about Bach trumpets I learned from my son–trumpet performance major at Indiana U, whose B flat trumpet is a Bach 239L (whatever that means) and whose first rental trumpet was a student Bach (which he still has, but doesn’t use). S says that older Bach trumpets were really good–his B flat is an older one bought used. Then apparently the brand went downhill and produced some less than stellar instruments. However, S says that Bach has improved a lot in recent years, so a new Bach would likely be a decent trumpet (again, depending upon model and all that).</p>
<p>My son’s C trumpet is a Monette, a somewhat controversial trumpet produced not far from us, which is loved by some and hated by others. He is now considering buying a Yamaha, after trying some out at a recent summer trumpet institute.</p>