This Bulletin is not only the successor of our popular Melton Magazine, which we produced for many years to regularly inform our friends and customers of Melton news and developments, but also this is the first step in achieving a virtual “club” for all our friends and musicians.

The Green Room does not only contain information on new and existing products, but also gives reports on trips, developments and of our friends amongst the Tuba and Euphonium world.

Melton and friends has always had a primary mission statement for our work, and that is to make excellent musical instruments, especially Tubas, with the full support and advice of world class artists - “musicians for musicians” coming from the French saying “l’art pour l’art” (art for the art). As a result of this work and development, some very good friendships have been forged throughout the years and within this editorial, I want to thank everybody who supported and continue to support us with their actions and advise. Thank you to all of you who have given us your endorsership, together with your honesty which symbolises that the Meinl Weston / Melton name and product is truly renowned and respected world wide since 1810.

In 1810, the company Wenzel Meinl GmbH was founded in the town of Graslitz in “Sudetenland” after the expelling of the Germans from the then Czechoslovakia. My father then re-founded the company here in Bavaria. He was originally a French horn player, but as a certain West German manufacturer who survived the war relatively without damages, was already the market leader in Horns, my father decided to concentrate on building Tubas, also instruments relating to the Flugelhorn family.

My father was the young master craftsman who stood at the drawing board contemplating his first Tuba design, he was free from the burden of having to use given mandrels and pieces, therefore able to create something really new. Out of this creativity, he was able to fulfil a new Bohemian tradition of a very conical, but very full taper that always had the goal to posses a sound containing much core within it. There is an identifiable glamour to the sound that is not cloudy, but that even in slur passages you can recognise true definition between the notes. In this way, our leading bell mandrels were developed that are still copied today very often.

The snake-like design of the slides, so commonly found on the Tubas of that time, was solved - every slide could now be easily reached and the instrument had a modern outlook. Also the ball linkage system for the rotary valves, now common place amongst all rotary Tubas - Melton were the first company to use this system on Brass wind instruments.

Therefore, my father gave directions in the development of the “modern” Tuba, always referring to his saying - “tradition in your heart and the future in your mind” to achieve these developments of the Melton Tubas, he was able to rely on numerous friends amongst musicians: in Germany, the Tuba players Engels, Lüghausen and Pröpper, and in the USA, Tubists Bill Bell and Rex Conner. I had the great luck to associate the following new legion of friends to our company - Melton Tuba Quartet, Walter Hilgers, Warren Deck and Sam Pilafian to name a few.

A very important decision was whether to add our traditional Wenzel Meinl GmbH into the TA Musik GmbH, which had only recently taken over the VEB Blechblas- und Signal- Instrumenten-Fabrik, a state owned company from Eastern Germany which had an important high quality Tuba production, known by the brand name “B&S”.

Now came the task for me to become the head of two Tuba companies, and together with the help from my co-manager Ferdinand Kleinschmidt, we undertook this task. It was very important to retain the separate special identities of both products and companies, and not to merge them as previous companies have so often been dragged into. This is something I really feel we have been successful in achieving, again with the help of our musician friends. Now both the Meinl-Weston and B&S names enjoy great success in the USA.

We will now meet the musicians I mentioned earlier in the Melton / Meinl-Weston Green Room, and for those musicians we will always have a place here for them. The Green Room is the club room found back-stage, where musicians meet before and after shows and concerts with friends and relax.

Welcome to the Green Room!

Gerhard A. Meinl
CEO

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