Well, this is hardly “breaking news” by now, but I am very excited to be working with Meinl-Weston on a new euphonium which will be offered to the general public in the near future.
Last summer, I headed over to Bavaria and the Meinl-Weston factory to work on the design of this new, as yet unnamed model. This was certainly a fantastic trip, and the Meinl Weston Folks are to be commended for their fine work. This was my first opportunity to work so closely on the design and building of a brass instrument, and it was quite an experience.
We started out by tinkering around a bit with the current flagship model, the 551. While this horn has a lot of fine playing characteristics, I was looking for something with a bit more brightness and flexibility which would be equally at home in either a solo or ensemble setting.
Head designer Ferdinand, Master Builder Andreas  and I tried a variety of different approaches, and I was especially fascinated with the computer software they use to optimize new designs before trying them out. After several days of “informed” trial and error, Ferdinand and Andreas had built a brand new instrument from scratch. This is an impressive feat to be sure, made al the moreso by the fact that there were no existing forms for the bottom bow, first branch or bell. Although Menil-Weston has many such forms for building tubas, not as many exist for euphoniums making quite a lot of hard labor for the boys in the factory. Andreas hand-hammered the bell of the new instrument, and you can see some of the mottling this creates in the photo of the unfinished instrument. Following a lot of polishing, the final product looks much better (see photo at right).  As my visit was already near its conclusion, there wasn’t time to fully plate the new horn, hence the multi-color finishes you see in the photo. The final version will likely be available both in lacquer and silver plate.
The new instrument is indeed more lithe and agile than its predecessor whilst maintaining the warm and full sound characteristic of Meinl-Weston. There are a few tweaks left to be made, after which we will release the new instrument to the public. One problem, though… nobody can seem to come up with a catchy name… please email me with your suggestions!
My thanks to Gearhard, Martin, Ferdinand, Andreas and all of the Meinl-Weston folks for their kind hospitality and hard work on this new instrument.