Horn plays much better in gigs than in my room

[Louilou]

Does this happen to some of you? I have a BAC Model 6 508 bore trombone that plays good in the practice room. But nothing special. I have a Bach 36 bore 525 that sound better than the BAC when I play it im my practice room. However, when I play a live Salsa gig with the challenging acoustics and amplification, the BAC goes into overcharge and plays fantastic. I took the Bach 36 to one of these gigs and it did not sound as good. The BAC just responds and plays a lot better in this environment. If I would have judged the BAC just from my practice room, it is just a good horn and not my favorite. However in live gigs is better than all the other horns I have played. Interesting! Better for me than other horns I have taken to gigs such as Shires MD+, or Bach 16, or Yamaha trombone. However, in a practice room, I might have preferred these other horns over the BAC.

[Neo Bri]

That is interesting. Acoustics?

[boneagain]

+1 on acoustics. Practice rooms and rooms full of other instruments being tried are terrible places to assess an instrument. I have yet to encounter an instrument that works equally well for all challenges to the business end. Close mic'd studio only? Close mic'd in large echo filled arena with over-amplified band? No mic with a small unamplified combo? No mic in a good concert hall? Practice room a fraction of the size of any of these? A little math on how the standing waves will set up for the low notes, and how the mid range will reflect (IF wall are close enough for reflection), and how the high range will be absorbed leaves little doubt in my mind that one horn can do ALL those things well. All we can do is hope for a sound person who knows quality of sound as well as quantity, and for a direction we can point our horns to get the wall and floor reflections we can live with.

[baileyman]

Crazy. Two different aspects I can think of.

One is it's hard for me to judge a horn until it is in context. They all sound pretty similar in the practice room.

Two, though, they all seem much more technically capable in the practice room. On the stand all the subtleties often disappear.

[Tarkus697]

Acoustics for sure. Also the materials surrounding you in the room. My downstairs practice area is chock full of books, a pull-out couch, our home office stations, etc.

Both my 36BO and my Yamaha 356G sound dead and muffled there, but in my band's practice space (similar layout but with acoustic foam on the walls) they sound a lot better. And once we're miked up in a performance space they sound brilliant.