HI, My son is just about to finish junior high(canada) and I would like to upgrade his trombone to last him through high school and possibly a little bit into college. Since he uses chromatik and plays about an hour a day and had asked me about it, I looked on ebay and found some horns that's ~$900, but I resisted the temptation remembering the his first trombone, it was from china(rust everywhere, water key is falling apart). I took him to several music store and he had tried the ysl 448g, he said the tone quality was very "euphonium like" but the lever for the low F key is very small and awkward; not only that the, the F key took nearly five second to come back. He also tried the eastman etb432, he said that the open tone is great but with the low F key closed, it almost sounded like that he is stopping it with his hand. Having noticed that both of these trombones have conventional rotor, should I consider the thayer valve more? Are they a maintenance nightmare? Or should I consider a cL2000 valve that uses mostly the same mechanism as a regular rotor. Having said that, they both costs around $3300.


Any helpful replies or previous experience with valve would be greatly appreciated