Dennis Houghton <[email protected]> wrote: - Atkinson: Mark Atkinson lived in China for months (maybe years) while training workers and setting-up production of these horns, which were intended to be reasonably priced student instruments. I believe he gave-up after several years of fighting quality control issues. His hand made horns, produced in California, are quite good.
I have seen this kind of organization -- that of maintaining separate but related shops in China and the US -- used by string manufacture, and it can work very well. A certain Chinese craftsman here in the SF area has four classes of instruments: - Instruments he hand builds himself in the U.S. - Instruments hand built by the ten or so crasftsmen under his supervision in his U.S. studio. - Instruments hand built by craftsmen working in China. These are instruments sufficient for more advanced students and serious amateurs. Well worth their price. - Instruments factory-built in his China factory. These are inexpensive beginner student models, but well built and quite worth their price. So far as I am aware, none of these classes of instrument have quality-control issues. One gets what one pqays for, but there is no junk on the low end. (The price for the first two categories depends somewhat on choice of materials. One way to get a violin that sounds like an old master is to start with wood that has been carefully aged 10-50 years in some attic warehouse in northern Italy or somewhere in the Balkans. Such wood is in very small supply, and very expensive.) Wouldn't it be wonderful if some similar manufactury evolves for brass? Beginners could have affordable instruments that would not play like complete junk. I suggest that the only way a producer of inexpensive beginner instruments can avoid producing junk is by also being engaged in parallel producing extremely high-quality instruments. The expertise and attention to quality necessary for the high end filters down to the low end. It sure works for this violin manufacturer. Perhaps one of these Chinese manufacturers will evole this way. _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
