Student French Horn by Gear4music, Gold

I was a little concerned buying this item as it was so very much cheaper than all the rest on the market. However it the Gear4music French Horn has a really nice, warm,rich sound and my son, who is working on his Grade 4 syllabus, is enjoying it as it's very much a step up from the single horn he had previously. He finds it easy to play - even more so after we had a duck foot fitted by our local music store. His teach is very impressed with it also. I would very much recommend this French Horn as suitable for mid to advanced level learners.

As someone else pointed out, this instrument is an excellent bargain with a very good quality/price ratio. Ideal for beginners and medium. Keys might be a bit stiff at the beginning, so a lot of oil is needed to make them work properly. The instrument comes with a 30-day return guarantee. Overall, the sound quality is satisfactory but I wouldn't use it to perform solo horn concertos; however, in an amateur/youth orchestra it fits very well. It certainly gives anyone a good chance to discover how a French horn plays and if it is a suitable instrument for a person, without the need of spending thousands of pounds. I bought it essentially because I had a single F horn and I wanted a double "on a budget". Especially for students, I strongly recommend it.

This represents tremendous value for money. It is a full double Geyer wrap horn with a detachable bell in a hard case; not the same quality as my Yamaha, but only 1/15th of the price.

I am no stranger to this brand of brass unstruments. I already have other instruments from them such as my bass trombone. So the company who make this aim for a good quality beginner instrument. I can't say I have had any negative experiences but as with all cheaper brass there are possitives and negatives, with a few compromises having to be made.What you get:I got a hard case and inside was a double horn main body, a detatchable bell, a mouthpiece and one pair of small white gloves. .... The white gloves were pretty useless to me and didn't fit anyway. It would have been better to have got a polishing cloth or a pull through to dry the inside instead of the gloves to be honest. There were also no accessories such as cleaning clothes, pull throughs or brushes etc. Neither was there any valve oil or rotary oil. These are essential so you will need to buy them anyway but a small bottle of each would have been great just to spread the cost of starting out a little bit.The pros:The case seems reobust and appares as though it could take a fair amount of knocks without affecting the instrument. The threads on the bell attatchment run smoothly and I was impressed that there wasn't horrid gring sounds, as long as you don't spin it at high speeds. The tubing all seems to be of high standard. The mouthpiece is comfortable and ideal specs for someone starting out. The valves work well straight out of the case even though the first press drown of each was stiff. The Bb valve is adjustable and of a comfortable shape for the thumb to sit on. The sound produced is good even if not the warm quality of a much more expensive instrument.This horn has a water key so you can let the water out and not have to rotate the instrument regularly during use. But I would rotate it after use.The cons:There is only one mouthpiece storage space. A lot of musicians will have at least 2 mouthpieces in case of drops or damage. Nothing worse than being at a gig and something happens to the mouthpiece without a backup. There is also no other storage spaces. So you litterally have a case that stores the instrument as it comes and nothing more. You would need to invest in another thing to carry around for your wipe through and oils etc.The tuning slides were dry. Like so dry I couldn't pull them out at all. I had to wiggle and pull and it took a lot of careful tugging. However once out and greesed it didn't resolve this at all. So I wiped clean and swapped over to vasaline like I use on my Trombone tuning slide. All but one went back in and worked fine without any hassle. The 2nd valve one on the F side however would not go back in at all. I had to lubricate each tube seperately and the pinch the 2 tubes toward each other very very slightly to get it go have both tube go in at the same time. This tuning slide is harder to move than the others but does function. Don't forget to press down the relevant key before trying to move the each tuning slide!!!This is a double key instrument so a con just for that, for a beginner, is the weight. It will be a lot heavier to hold up and play. I have had to take regular breaks as I am not used to that much weight.The thumb valve key moves. No matter how much I try tighten the screw to keep the key where I want it, it still moves back and forth and if pressed a bit hard it moves down out of place. I have yet to find a fix for this but I may have to take a pair of small pliers to it to grip it enough to make it tighten up more than I can with my hands. This could maybe have been made better by it being tightened with an alan key rather than a T button style screw. Although I have that set up on my Bass Trombone and that adjustable trigger key also has a problem with movement. So I am not sure if there is a solution. Both instruments are the same band so I don't know if other instruments have similar problems.As mentioned before about the sound quality not being as high quality as a much more expensive instrument, the sound is not actually bad. The tuning between open partials (the series of notes all found with no valves pressed down) is a bit questionable. Although fine tuning is met with the right hand in the bell, the odd pitch wouldn't tune enough, especially when played against a drone sound.Overall this is a lower end of the horn rage and should be expected to look, sound and perform as a lower end brass instrument. As lower end brass goes? This is high quality and very well made. As long as you can overlook some negatives.