In the Test­ing Room

This past week­end, Veron­ica and I took a trip to Min­neapo­lis. Our orig­i­nal rea­son for going was so that I could spend a few hours at Mid­west Musi­cal Imports try­ing out some new bas­soons. But, Veron­ica has some friends in and around the Twin Cities, so we made a week­end out of it.

We hit the road Fri­day evening. The roads weren’t in the best con­di­tion, so it was sort of slow going. We made it with­out inci­dent, but it was 11:30 before we man­aged to check into our hotel. On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, we hunted down a cof­fee shop, then went right to Mid­west. I’d called ear­lier in the week to make sure that they’d have the bas­soons on hand that I was inter­ested in, as they often send instru­ments out for tri­als. They didn’t have all the instru­ments from their cat­a­log on hand, but they had plenty for me to try out.

I started out play­ing my bas­soon (thanks to my teacher’s advice), so I could get a feel for the room. Then, I tried a suc­ces­sion of Fox pro horns — 201, 660, and a cou­ple of 601s. A cou­ple of them I rejected out­right, due to lack of res­o­nance or insta­bil­ity of pitch. After the Foxes, I moved to the instru­ments in which I was most inter­ested — two Püch­n­ers. They had a 4000 series and a 5000 series, and I liked them both. The 5000 has some extra bells and whis­tles — E-flat trill key, A-flat/B-flat trill key, bal­ance hanger, “gentleman’s cut” long joint, etc. It also has a spe­cial fin­ish called “Alte Veldt” (“Old World”), which is (I think) sup­posed to emu­late the lac­quer of older Heckel bas­soons. I liked both of the Püch­n­ers quite a bit. I went back and forth between them and my favorite of the Foxes, and they were both superior.

Rack o’ Bassoons

So, I now have the two Püch­n­ers on two-week trial peri­ods. I’ll alter­nate between the two and play them both in ensem­bles. I’m hop­ing also to set up a blind lis­ten­ing test in one of the recitals halls — have peo­ple lis­ten and make com­ments while I play the two behind a screen. Now back to the trip…

After spend­ing a few hours at Mid­west, we headed off to Ikea to meet a bunch of Veronica’s friends from Luther Col­lege, where she did her under­grad. Once every­one had arrived, we walked across the street to the Mall of Amer­ica to find some lunch. I won’t say much about the MoA, but it’s huge and ridicu­lous. After lunch we walked back over to Ikea and spent a cou­ple of hours brows­ing around. I picked up a few small things (mostly kitchen stuff), but noth­ing major. By the time we’d fin­ished at the assemble-it-yourself par­adise, it was evening. So, we all went back to our hotel to hang out, eat pizza, and make use of the pool and hut tub. All in all a very fun day.

We headed back to Madi­son on Sun­day morn­ing. We’d thought about doing some sight­see­ing, but we had to check out of the hotel, and I didn’t want to either carry three bas­soons around or leave them in my car. I’d meant to take pic­tures of our trip, but I some­how man­aged to leave my cam­era on the floor of my room. Luck­ily, Veron­ica brought hers and snapped a cou­ple of pic­tures at Mid­west for me. I’ll keep you posted on whether I decide to buy one of these instruments.