How I Got my Horn

    When I first started playing the French horn I began just like every other person does, on a beat up student horn from the school. Mine was a Holton "pea-shooter" and it was clunky and way too small for my body. My private teacher, Wendy, would always comment on how my left hand was all wrong but the matter of the fact is that I just couldn't fit this horn.
    Now one day I paid a visit to a small local college in Dubuque to play with the director of bands there. He noticed the same thing about the horn, it was just all wrong for me. He brought me into his instrument closet and had me try out a few of his school's horns to see if I could get a better sound on any of them. I wasn't having much luck until I tried this one very big one. It looked old and was a bit clunky too, but it fit my hand perfectly and when I played it my tone was so much bigger and warmer. We both knew this was the horn for me, so he let me borrow it for awhile, just I wouldn't  have to play on my old horn.
    The next day I went in for my lesson with Wendy and from the first note I play she can immediately hear the difference. She told me that my sound had changed in the best way possible and that I finally found a horn big enough for me. This horn was a keeper.
    After about a month of playing on this horn I really wanted it to by my horn. I went and called the professor  from the college I was borrowing the horn from and talked to him about buying it or some kind of trade. What we agreed on is that I would give him my old trumpet that I never played anymore and he'd let me have the French horn, since he had never had a horn player before at his school.
    A few months later I found this horn was a called a Conn 8D and that there were either the really good ones and the really "sketchy" ones. I went online to look mine up, and to my surprise, I was playing one of the early H-Series Conn's and they're actually very desirable.
   Now that I have mine all fixed up its working like brand new and I couldn't love it more. I consider this to be one of my biggest breaks in my French horn playing career, because if I hadn't found such an affordable horn that fit me so well and had such a good sound, I don't know if I'd be playing the French horn still today.

     If you would like to leave a story of how you got any of your instruments, feel free to write it in the comments. I'd love to hear your stories too.