| HornDawg: Until recently, the only mpc I could use was a Bach 5FL flugel and it was quite nice with that but much brighter and thinner than I wanted. Recently got my hands on a Bach 3 Mellophone mpc and the difference is like night and day (except it is a much more drastic change from the horn mpc to this and back). I am a Marcinkiewicz artist and am thinking of asking Joe to make me a piece for this horn.
With an actual Mellophone mpc, the out of tune notes fall in strange places. The E and Eb seem pretty good but the F in the staff is WAY flat. The octave from middle C (written) to 3rd space C seems stretched. Some of this will, no doubt, be me getting adjusted to the larger I.D. of the mello mpc.
Sound gets better as you go up with a very "Poppy" G above the staff and a gorgeous Ab! Middle C down to the low F# are fat and punchy. It is the fifth between middle C and G in the staff that are kinda funky, but so far nothing you can not fix as you go.
Behind the bell, it sounds kinda honky, but practice room recordings tell me that is not whats coming out of the bell. I do not think there is anything wrong with this horn that some practice room time would not fix. Cheesy
Okay. I did get Marcinkiewicz to make me a piece for this horn. Partially because it was so hard to find something to fit it. I finally sent him the Bach 3 I had been playing and asked him to match the shank to that. We talked about my difficulty in switching back and forth from my horn piece (about 17.5mm internal diameter) to the Bach (what is it, about 19.75mm?) and back. Apparently, he has been working with some of the band directors in his area on mello mpcs for marching band anyway, so he had "mellos on the brain" right then. What he sent me has the same ID as the horn mpc he made at the same time (seems bigger than my old one to me...) and looks to be modelled on the 6V mello mpc that, apparently, comes with many marching horns? The Kelley mpc is based on this and Joes is of a similar depth (pretty darn shallow compared to the Bachs).
How does it sound? Well, it projects like crazy! At first I thought it was too bright, but I am realizing that what sounds dark enough to me is actually WAY to dark to play on a gig (for both horn and mello). At a soft volume, I can get that sort of "fluffy" jazz flugel kind of thing going on and then as you put more air into it, instead of getting brighter and harder the sound gets fatter and denser, more "french horn-like" for want of a better term. In fact, the middle and upper registers just sound huge! The scale is still out (but I kinda expected that) and the design of this mpc makes it a bit harder to pull to E and F at the bottom of the staff (written) up to where I want them.
I am having trouble getting the Ab, A Bb, B and C above the staff to center. I know it is a combination of me with this mpc because I can pop them out on the Bach, but they will not lock with the Marcinkiewicz. I am going to write him about that. To be honest, when I first saw the cup shape and depth, I was disappointed. It just looked too small and shallow. Shows that you should use your ears first and eyes second, I guess.
Wink
Edit: OK. I guess my chops were just WAY off yesterday. After writing the above post, I picked up the Holton and started to just play - no long warmup, just music - and the notes is question, though a little ragged because of I was cold, speak and center just fine. I do think they do not center WHERE I think they should which could cause the problem. Anyway, I am going to record the mello today and see what is going on in front of the bell...
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