Review: The Quantum 5050 Mellophone

Love it or hate it, mellophone playing is a reality for most horn players in the United States at some point in time. In terms of my teaching at ASU, marching band is a requirement (two years) for music education students (only), and mellophone is an option for others that participate in marching activities here or elsewhere.

Mellophone is a part of our mid-range world and improvements in mellophones will only help build the numbers of horn players, especially at the high school level, which is certainly a goal of mine. This weekend I had the opportunity to try one of the new Jupiter Quantum 5050 mellophones. The Quantum Marching Project is their attempt to build an instrument on the next level of quality than anything in their past.

The athletic bands at ASU and The Academy Drum and Bugle Corps both have been involved with the development and early adoption of the Quantum line. I have been following the development of this new instrument with interest this past year with the publication of my new book on the mellophone and with performing mellophone from time to time in the praise band at my church. It was in this venue that I primarily tested the Quantum 5050.

Backing up, as a horn teacher I was particularly interested when I learned that Jupiter was developing the full package and it was to include a brand new mouthpiece design, a hybrid horn/mellophone mouthpiece, which to my understanding is to be something similar the top portion of a fairly wide rim horn mouthpiece mated to a small alto horn cup. They were also to introduce their version of the venerable Mello 6. However, the new mouthpieces did not arrive with the instruments that arrived in Arizona so I also took this time of testing as an additional opportunity to try a variety of mouthpieces on the new instrument. More on that in a moment.

My first reaction to the instrument itself is generally good. Construction details look solid. I noted a couple of small soldering issues but they are minor. For me with my largish hands the left hand position is somewhat cramped but the weight and balance of the instrument is good and I am sure I could manage this aspect. I love having the movable slides on the first and third valves. The instrument seems to produce a big, full tone that should project well on the field. I love the case too, compact and easy to carry.

Playing wise I will divide my review by range of the instrument, working my way down from the top.

The most impressive range of the instrument is the range above the staff. My main playing comparison is with my personal mellophone, an older King 1120. Definitely the top of the horn is better on the Quantum 5050 and this fact will give arrangers freedom to ask for the mellophone to soar right up to high C. Frankly I can play higher on this instrument than on my triple horn with ease.

The octave from G in the staff to G at the top of the staff is quite good but different than typically seen on mellophones by other makers. My old King 1120 for example is painfully flat on the written E at the top of the staff, and this is quite typical of most mellophones. On the Quantum however this pitch is not at all flat and is actually sharp!

Pausing for a second, in general I would rather things be in tune but if something is out I would rather an out of tune note lay sharp than flat if I had a choice. It is much easier to bend pitches down and also on mellophone specifically you have several movable slides which aid intonation in terms of lowering notes that are sharp.

Returning to the upper octave from G to G, from E to C-sharp the notes all lay slightly high and for the notes that have movable slides available players will want to extend them somewhat, at least in situations where these notes are not played in passing. Also the range from B-flat to A-flat is slightly sharp, requiring some extension of the movable slides. It was a bit different than my old King but it took very little time to get used to. In terms of my playing in the praise band this new instrument was immediately very comfortable above G on the second line.

However, the bottom octave of the instrument tested has a problem. In short the bottom of the instrument goes quite flat. There are six notes in the bottom octave that are so flat on the instrument tested as to be nearly unusable, specifically E, E-flat, C, B, B-flat and A. Written D and C-sharp are normally sharp notes; curiously, on the Quantum they are nearly in tune without extending any slides. The A-flat below the staff also lays about right in tune. The low G and F-sharp are somewhat sharp but the movable slides will come to the rescue on those two pitches.

To put this issue in more concrete terms, the written middle C is so flat as to register as a B-natural on a tuner if you blow it where it lays with a standard mellophone mouthpiece. Not good; it is nearly a half step flat! Normally you would think that this note should be one of the most reliable on the instrument. Again, you would prefer any note to lay naturally in tune, but if you have a choice you would rather adjust a sharp note. The thing is if a note is sharp you can bring it down various ways. True, a note that is slightly flat can be lipped up a little. But if it is very flat you are more or less just stuck there out of tune, you don’t have enough wiggle room to bring it up to pitch.

My old King 1120 in contrast behaves much more like a trumpet in this range. The low D and C-sharp are quite sharp and need the movable slide kicked out quite far, but every note is actually usable in this register in any musical context.

I believe in terms of DCI usages in the short term arrangers involved with corps using the new Quantum 5050 will just have to avoid the six worst notes on the instrument except as passing tones. In a show I believe that the instrument will work quite well, as that range is not often used on the field. But the poor low range intonation will wreak havoc on personal and group warm-ups which normally run the mellophones in and out of this range; the warm-up I present in my book for example would be a struggle as I try in the routine to keep the player centered more in the range of the horn than in third trumpet range. I hope that Quantum can fix this issue in the longer term; it is a major flaw of the instrument.

I mentioned earlier that the new Jupiter mouthpieces were not shipped with the instrument I tested. The mating of mouthpiece to instrument is critical to the playing qualities of any brass instrument. I tried a total of 8 different middle range mouthpieces on the Quantum 5050 to see what impact they had on the instrument and on the issues noted already.

While they are still used on mellophones, Mello 6 type mouthpieces were actually designed for the G mellophone bugle, not the F mellophone. I tried three different models of this venerable mouthpiece on the instrument. The worst of the three for me was the Kanstul M6. This mouthpiece is somewhat shallower than the UMI CKB Mello 6 and the Deg Mello 6V, which were also tested. If you want to use a Mello 6 the Deg was the best of the three. But you can do better; these all had the most pronounced intonation issues at the bottom of the horn and the tone is not the best.

Among all the other mouthpieces available to me to test the Curry 1HTF shines as the best compromise. This is a hybrid trumpet-Flugelhorn cup that I have reviewed previously in my mellophone series in this blog, and it has received other good reviews. It is a significant improvement over the Mello 6; it is slightly deeper, plays the best to the top of the range, and has a bigger sound over the full range of the instrument. I believe that the Karl Hammond mouthpieces would give a similar result, although I have yet to try one myself.

I tired four other, larger mouthpieces on the Quantum 5050 that I would also like to note. Theoretically they would be a better acoustical match and could impact the tuning issues in a positive manner.

The best of the four was a Bach 12 alto horn mouthpiece, the smallest they make (the Bach 12 mellophone mouthpiece is for a “classic” mellophone with a cornet shank; the alto mouthpiece is the same cup with a shank that works in a modern mellophone). With this mouthpiece in particular the low range intonation was better, and I love the tone color. I don’t think any corps is likely to adopt this one due to the large inner diameter not meshing with anyone’s chops, but I have often thought that it would be a great starting point for something new and better, and from what has been described to me I believe that the new Jupiter hybrid mouthpiece is to be of a generally similar design whenever it is finally released. Two slightly larger Alto (tenor) horn mouthpieces were very disappointing on the instrument, a Blessing 5 and a Dennis Wick 5, which surprised me as the Blessing 5 is my personal preferred mouthpiece on my old King 1120; on the Quantum it really lacked focus. Finally I also tried the horn mouthpiece I normally play now, a Laskey 80J, with an adapter. It is really not bad; it did not lose focus like the larger tenor/alto horn mouthpieces and intonation was similar to the Bach 12, better than on the smaller mouthpieces.

In short the Curry was the clear winner among the group above second line G, but the larger cup volume of the Bach 12 and Laskey were helpful for intonation in the bottom octave, and they played well over the whole horn. This is very intriguing in relation to the instrument and the as yet not seen new Jupiter hybrid mouthpiece the Quantum mellophone was presumably designed to use.

One thing I really like about the Curry line is there are models of the same mouthpiece with several inner diameters—in other words, models that fit the chops of horn players and models that fit the chops of trumpet players. The Hammond mouthpieces, while undoubtedly similar in respects and well made based on the reviews, in contrast look to be set up primarily for trumpet players and utilize a trumpet inner diameter. I know that if I had to suggest a mouthpiece at this moment specifically for the Quantum mellophone in a drum corps section composed of a mixture of trumpet and horn players I would suggest the use of the Curry 1HTF by the horn players and the 3TF by the trumpet players. The 3TF has the same inner diameter as a 3C trumpet mouthpiece; the 1HTF has the inner diameter of a horn mouthpiece. Both will give a better result than any version of a Mello 6 that I have tried to date with a big, full version of the type of sound expected from a mellophone on the field.

In conclusion I liked some things about Quantum 5050 very much. The range above the staff is quite good and the mid-range while not perfect is way above average for a mellophone. But unfortunately the bottom octave is hard to rate as anything other than poor. While this may not be a problem in actual show use, it is still a disappointment. I hope that additional testing of leadpipe and bell designs will result in improvement of these issues in future production of this instrument. And I still look anxiously forward to testing their new hybrid mouthpiece when it is released; this could frankly revolutionize mellophone mouthpieces.

For another review of the Quantum 5050 see the review in The Middle Horn Leader