You get what you pay for.

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★★★☆☆
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Thechockiehouse's review of Tristar Piccolo Bb

“You get what you pay for.”

★☆☆☆☆

written by Thechockiehouse on 17/12/2013

The instrument arrived and obviously I was very excited. On opening the case I found quite a good looking instrument. I had issues with the valves and gave the instrument a thorough clean. The instrument was quite filthy. Some of the valves still had metal off cuts still in them. They have used cheap rubber off cuts for the spit valves. Replacing all the parts was a nightmare. The valve caps and bases struggled to fit back onto the valves. It took several hours and much more cleaning to actually get the valves to move up and down. The case is of extremely poor quality. On pulling the mouthpiece out the entire casing came with it including some foam. If a little more time was allowed during manufacturing and packaging much of these issues would be remedied.

The sound of the instrument was quite surprising. It sounds great playing within the C scale and I found it easier to produce notes on this instrument than another piccolo trumpet I have of much better brand and quality.

Problems arose once I went higher than C. "D" pitches more like a semitone than a tone above C and much use of alternate fingering is required for D, E and E flat. The 4th valve tuning slide needed to come out a significant amount but once done tuning of this valve was adequate.
I may have gotten a lemon but be be careful buying this instrument. It's cheap for a very good reason.
(My normal instrument is a Schilke E flat soprano cornet)

  • Sound Quality

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  • Intermediate

    Reviewer's Musical Standard

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