[Trombone-l] Selman

[Kenny Carter]

Yes, I bought one of the Selman altos as well.  I really don't have anything
else to compare it to, but so far so good.  Especially for $184 total ($139
plus $45 for postage, which I considered as part of the purchase price
anyway...I figured the seller was padding the postage price a bit to lower
his eBay fees, but it didn't matter to me).
$139 for a new alto 'bone...I felt like a sucker, but I ordered it
anyway...and I like it!  I guess I might be "babying" it a bit, because I
feel like it couldn't possibly be as sturdy as say, a Conn 34H, but like I
said, so far so good.
Here are a couple of simple recordings I've made of two 4-part Christmas
tunes if you'd like to hear my Selman...the altos are the two higher voices.
The lower two voices are from a 1971 or so Conn Constellation. Nothing
particulary innovative here, I just wanted to document the sound of the
alto.  One person on the forum referred to the tone of his as being
"buttery," and that's how I would describe this one.

Lo How A Rose E'er Blooming
http://www.kcwebservices.net/Audioplayers/lo_how_a_rose_eer_blooming.htm

Carol of the Bells
http://www.kcwebservices.net/Audioplayers/CarolOftheBells.htm

(Recorded on a Boss BR1600CD with a Shure 58A Beta mic

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-----Original Message-----
From: Pieter Bos [mailto:bos.pieter at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2006 5:00 AM
To: Jeff Albert; John Burton; TROMBONE-L at server5.samford.edu
Subject: Re: [Trombone-l] alto trombone was Re: WBEZ-CHICAGO PLANS TO
PHASEOUTMUSIC


I bought one of those Selman altos. Although this one is branded Stagg,
comes with a full year of warranty and can be bought in normal shops, it's
exactly the same instrument. It plays ok, comes with a really nice and light
case, very shallow very wide mouthpiece, small cleaning cloth and cheap
white gloves (?!?). Slide was scratchy at first. Turned out it needs a
cleaning rod, an old shirt, some brasso and a bit of your time and it should
work fine. Tuning slide is a bit loose, but hetman ultra slide grease fixed
that. Others have had comparable results. The removable leadpipe can be
replaced by those that fit the Kuehnl and Hoyer Slokar, if you would want
to. Apparently, this improves it a bit, but it also costs nearly as much as
the entire instrument. The entire instrument is a copy of this Slokar model.
The case is an adapted copy of a BAM classic, the case for the Selmans
apparently is some other design than mine, a full hard case while mine is
mainly styrofoam with cloth (and perhaps some very light wood, no way to
tell really).

Buying a mouthpiece for this thing is strange - you're putting one third of
the worth of your instrument in a mouthpiece!

I had the change to compare it with a Laetsch, which costed over ten times
as much. The Laetzsch clearly responded better and had a better sound, with
about the same degree of but quite different intonation issues. But you can
buy ten of these inexpensive ones for just one Laetzsch!

Overall, i certainly don't regret my purchase, nice little horn to learn to
play alto trombone on and it sounds quite good. I'd stay away from the
nickel plated one though. If it's not lacquered, you might develop a nickel
allergy from playing it often - that's best avoided!

Pieter