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The pTrumpet is plastic trumpet.

I've seen a video of Alison Balsom play one. But she's a trumpet Goddess! She could rolled up piece of cardboard sound good.

For a kid in year 4 of trumpet, in school jazz band that recently rated 'silver' at a judged festival, picked for a solo (basically a bit above average for 8th grade) are these pTrumpets playable?

By comparison my Dad has played sax his whole life, but finds most 'travel' saxophones nearly unplayable.

I wonder if these pTrumpets are reasonably playable.

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  • It may very well be a sign that plastic trumpets are not instruments you can borrow from schools to play in their band classes with--not even elementary schools.
    – Dekkadeci
    Mar 13 '19 at 0:12
  • @Dekkadeci, "sign" of what? I don't understand your meaning.
    – Michael Curtis
    Mar 13 '19 at 12:51
  • Do you mean 'even the lowest school grades don't use them' and that's a sign of low quality?
    – Michael Curtis
    Mar 13 '19 at 13:01
  • Close enough--I also tried to convey "even the school grades that forgive bad tone the most will cough up the cash to buy more expensive, better-sounding instruments".
    – Dekkadeci
    Mar 13 '19 at 14:43
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Yes, they're 'reasonably playable'. In fact, that's exactly how I'd describe them.

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  • Thanks for the input. For our limited need and the low price, I think that's acceptable.
    – Michael Curtis
    Apr 12 '19 at 12:50
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Remember that this is a paid endorsement video.

I had a chance to play around on one a while back, and I was surprised that it wasn't as bad as I thought. It wasn't very good though. I think Alison is flat-out lying when she says it plays easily--I found it very stuffy. I also found the intonation a little off, but not by a lot and that could have been a bad mouthpiece match. Not really "difficult" to play, just on the cheap end. It's not surprising that professionals can sound good on it.

Also, you're not going to get taken seriously playing something like this in a competition. A serious 8th grader should be looking for a much higher quality instrument.

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  • Perish the thought that she simply had a different experience, or that there might be manufacturing variation. How easy it is to call people liars on the internet.
    – user48353
    Mar 12 '19 at 22:07
  • I noticed in the video she was using (what I assume is) her personal mouthpiece rather than the plastic one that comes with the pTrumpet. That probably makes a difference. BTW, the intention isn't to use this as a main instrument, but as a travel instrument while on a long family vacation. We don't want to risk taking the good trumpet.
    – Michael Curtis
    Mar 13 '19 at 13:00
  • @MichaelCurtis, In the end of the video she played with the plastic mouthpiece. So she did try that one out. But I consider it cheating or unfair that she started testing it with her personal mouthpiece. If you are going to test and/or demonstrate what you can do with such an instrument you should test that instrument exactly as it is. After doing that you can argue whether you can improve the quality with another mouthpiece, but then you are starting going beyond the idea of something with a low budget.
    – Lars Peter Schultz
    Apr 11 '19 at 23:38
  • @LarsPeterSchultz, thanks for pointing that out about the mouthpiece switch. I'll watch it again.
    – Michael Curtis
    Apr 12 '19 at 12:43

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