By Quinn Foster
January 19, 2026
In Los Angeles in 1923, Charles Gerard Conn published a book called The Wonder Book: How to Achieve Success. A Hail Mary project to regain relevance, Wonder was filled with his stories as a Civil War Union Army Captain, gems about founding a half dozen companies (including his instrument company in 1883), winning an election in Congress, and serving as mayor in an industrial boomtown. Conn was a successful man indeed. Alas, Conn’s potential successes as a self-help author were undermined by his true passion: talking shit.
Three decades prior to Wonder, Conn founded The Elkhart Truth, a highly respected little newspaper for his Indiana town’s namesake. However, The Gossip was the publication which he used for the world’s second oldest profession: being a petty bastard. After a series of poor investments and a wet bible’s worth of questionable—and soon to be legally defensible—publications about his competitors, he found himself out of money and about to hand his rivals even more money.
Most of Conn’s assets—his successful instrument company and The Elkhart Truth newspaper—were sold in 1915 to pay massive debts. Divorced, booted from his Elkhart estate, penniless, and in the winter of his life, Conn saw his luck permanently run dry. If anyone ever idolized the wondrous Conn, they certainly didn’t in 1923—just eight short years before he would die, thousands of miles away from the ashes of his former empire.¹²³
There is no more important American French horn in history than that of Conn’s namesake, the Conn 8D. Its rich sound has dominated the most important titles in cinema, soaring over Princess Leia and Indiana Jones alike. During the twentieth century, Conn after Conn sat on the slacks of crusty old men who won their orchestra auditions in directors’ hotel rooms, where the only screen was unfiltered cigarette smoke and leaded gasoline fumes. When serious students chose a horn, there was no choice. They played a Conn and only a Conn.
Despite its decades-long domination in the United States, many players would say it is a horn best left to history. The Conn 8D is the crown jewel of love-hate relationships in French horn playing. Modern professional horn players are sure to receive at least an eyebrow raise if they bust one out on a gig, if not a full-blown pointing and haha-ing. The Conn has shifted slowly from professional default to vintage voice, but without the language to reflect that change.
In mid-2019, while on tour playing a grueling horn part in the pit, I hung up my Conn in favor of an “easier instrument.” The former principal trumpet of a major orchestra would be at one such show and remark, “I’m so glad you finally let go of that thing. I’m not sure what you were working so hard for.” After all, Conns are a tough blow.
Rewind. It is September 2017. I am at an audition for the Princeton Symphony that I am utterly mediumly prepared for. I warm up in a room full of familiar and unfamiliar faces. I hold in my hands the room’s only Conn 8D. I am immediately approached by an old friend and colleague, also a former 8D player: “Man, you’re still rockin the ‘65 Chevy!”
I proceeded to play as mediumly as I prepared at the Princeton audition for reasons unrelated to my horn being a Conn. But I did think to myself: Was it the Conn? Would I have hit more notes with an instrument manufactured sometime after the Coolidge administration? Would I have sounded more like the eccentric principal horn behind the curtain had I just stopped being stubborn and bought a triple?
Is my illustrious vintage taste holding me back?
In the late nineties, up the street in New York Fawkin City, a horn player by the name of Phil Myers thought the same thing I did: What if my commitment to the Conn is doing me no favors? Phil’s playing, by his own account, suffered from imperfect articulation in the midrange and lack of control when deciding to make certain louder dynamics brassy or not brassy.⁴
And despite his undeniable prowess as the principal horn of the New York Philharmonic, Phil Myers’s cracks, chips, and cockadoodledoos were so legendary that the New York Times wrote an entire article about whether our instrument is even relevant—and that was many years after he switched to an “easier” instrument, the brand of which will be discussed later.⁵
The Conn 8D had become essential to the New York sound, and Phil was something of a standard bearer. Which horn could possibly replace it? Which horn builder would be the lucky wall flower at the dance? Cut to a then little-known horn maker across the pond in Germany, Englebert Schmid, and his full triple French horn.*
Phil bought one, and most of his section soon followed, saving their Conns for other endeavors like bashing out the windows of Joe Alessi’s PT Cruiser. Soon, throes upon throes of horn players across New York and the rest of the United States would be playing triples (and, as I will detail, horns with a Geyer wrap), and a legion of Conn 8D fanboys would be complaining about it. Phil’s decision profoundly changed the game.
Triple horns feature a high F or Eb alto horn, activated by a second change valve, which makes accuracy in the higher ranges of the horn much easier. But that isn’t as important as the philosophical change that triples represented in the nineties. Triples were a different beast, and their sound was not your grandpa’s French horn sound. To the eager adopters, it was direct and sizzly—helpful for matching our feistier brass cousins in the back row and more forgiving at the end of a long concert.
To those sipping haterade—the Conn 8D evangelists—the Schmid was hardly more than a curly-shaped trombone in timbre. It was edgy and two-dimensional. Most importantly, it was a rebuke of the philosophy and status quo that shaped the New York French horn sound. To the diehard Conn bros, Phil Myers and the Schmid adopters were not just bucking a trend. They were traitors.
Phil’s switch wasn’t ground zero for Conn 8D’s death, despite its utmost importance. Twenty-five years before he jumped ship for the Schmid and its magical second change valve, never to miss a single high note ever again, Conn’s ubiquity took the biggest hit it would ever take. In 1969 and 1970, Conn moved its factory from Elkhart, IN to Abilene, TX. The quality of the new Conns produced in Abilene were, by and large, bong water. Conical valves were replaced with cylindricals, hollow bracings held the pipes together, and C.G. Conn, Ltd. opted for cheaper labor performed by less-experienced factory workers.6 Depending on who you talk to, the Conn 8D never recovered to its former glory. When pros now look to buy a Conn 8D, one question is paramount: Where was it made? Most want to hear that it was made in Elkhart and that it sat in a closet since then.
The summer of ‘69 and the five and dime are long gone, and while string players enjoy instrument appreciation, brass players suffer dilapidation and corrosion of our beloved horns. Most of the once-brilliant Conns have been abused by high schoolers and Metropolitan Opera assistant horn players alike. To players who prefer newer instruments and for some reason want a Conn, there are simply no options for new, high-quality Conns.**
* For non-horn players, triple horns have two change valves and double horns (such as the Conn 8D) have one. The distinction between these horns will be discussed in the single and double horn sections later in the essay.
** Depending on who you talk to, there are new alternatives to Conns made in Elkhart. Among these are the “Vintage” 8D from 2008, the “Next Generation” 8D from 2023, and the custom Kruspe wrap by Jim Patterson. The quality of these instruments seem to be a major step up, but their arrival was too little and too late.
Once upon a time, the horn was a valveless tube known as a natural horn. Similar to a bugle, it had a mouthpiece at one end and a bell at the other. There was one person who didn’t sound like shit: Lowell Greer (RIP). We paid him a large sum of money to fly all over the country, where he performed with period orchestras and dealt with the consequences of his life choices. Thoughts and prayers for our natural horn players.
At some point, someone didn’t want their playing to sound like a basset hound in duress anymore, and so they invented a valve—one, to be specific. Then someone added another and another, and then brass instruments mostly had three valves most of the time.
This worked well for brass instruments that weren’t utterly ridiculous like the horn.
On a single horn with three valves in the key of F, our usable register begins way, way above the actual lowest part of our possible range. Whereas a trumpet’s lowest range begins in a place characteristic of the trumpet sound, our range begins incredibly low—think Shosty’s Fifth and Stalin’s goons coming to kill you for writing the wrong kind of opera.
As the pitches on the horn get closer to usable range, the partials (or possible notes you can hit with a given fingering) are closer and closer together—and harder to hit. This series of events makes it very difficult for your friendly neighborhood horn player to hit as many notes as, say, a trumpet player. If you’ve noticed that horn players sure do miss a lot of notes, this is why. This is what we horn players tell ourselves and others so that people don’t fire us for sounding bad.
“Well, okay,” said horn makers in the late 1800s, as they smoked cigarettes with their twelve year-old children. “Let’s just take a high-pitched horn and affix it to the bottom of a low-pitched horn. As horn players move up the range, they can use yet another valve—a change valve—to switch to this high horn. The notes on the high horn will be further apart than on the low horn, and we’ll call it the ‘double’ horn.”* Their children coughed and returned to their job polishing shoes with mercury.
But where to put this new valve?
If a change valve’s placement on a double horn sounds like a subject about which normal people should lack pretension, maintain their composure, and pursue zero debate, congratulations on having met zero French horn players in your life. What are the rental prices like there?
Horn “wraps,” or the way we position the change valve, have been the subject of many a fedora-crowned Redditor. Lord knows how many people Dave Weiner banned from the Horn People Facebook page over such rehashed and stale drama, many of whom have never advanced out of the prelims of their mom’s basement.
Enter Carl Geyer and Ed Kruspe, creators of the “two” French horn wraps.* The Conn 8D is almost an exact replica of the Kruspe Horner, the wrap’s namesake. The Geyer is its mortal enemy, invented by Carl Geyer and, to some extent, Herbert Fritz Knopf.7 Horns with Geyer wraps would soon aid triple horns (Schmid foremost among them) in permanently annihilating the Conn’s modern relevance.
That sound you hear is horn players with functioning eyeballs recoiling in anticipation of the most repetitive, bad-faith debate in all of French horn-dom:
“Neither wrap is better!! It’s the player, not the equipment!! I went to school in New York!!”
Hornists say this all the time: No one wrap is better, and no wrap “won.” I’ve said this sincerely. But I have bad news for you and me: It’s total bullshit. Geyer won. By a lot. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it.
Kruspe, and by extension, the Conn 8D, is never coming back in the way that Kruspe lovers hoped. Telling a student to purchase a Conn is essentially telling them to buy one horn for college and another one for later—one on which they can actually win and keep a job.
* There are many other interesting French horn wraps which don’t fit neatly into these categories, but Geyer and Kruspe are by far the most widespread in the United States.
You know the Biggie/Tupac story as well as I do. If the Diddy documentary didn’t reignite your passion for the old East and West coast hip hop rivalry, allow me.
Ahem.
Like horn’s two most important wraps, the two most important hip hop artists in history are Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. Before and after their tragic deaths, their music shaped a musical rivalry which would define a generation and be debated until the end of time. Until it wasn’t.
Biggie and Tupac fandom were framed by their respective geography and their listeners’ tastes. It was Tupac’s deeply political messaging vs. Biggie’s poetry and command of the rhythmic backbeat. Though the aesthetics of this rivalry can be debated until the end of time and no one is “wrong” to prefer either, history didn’t leave the question open. When the fog of their brutal murders eventually cleared, modern rappers carried Biggie’s flame by the thousands. Tupac was vintage, quaint, and a charming relic from a bygone era.
Conn enthusiasts need to recognize that the Conn is beat. There is no modern “main axe” use case for the Conn, and like Biggie vs. Tupac—a fierce and intense battle while the giants were alive–the question of Conn’s relevance has been decided now that the dust has settled and every modern horn builder and their mom are making triples and Geyers. And, my Conn brothers in Christ, your colleagues are annoyed that you keep insisting that the Conn holds its own. Every time Conn lovers talk about how you just can’t beat the tone or that Geyers and triples are missing the characteristic French horn timbre that blends woodwinds and brass, they might as well sign on as co-writers of C.G. Conn’s Wonder book.
The Conn didn’t just shape American horn playing and create the New York sound—it defined what “professional” meant for long enough that we forgot it was a stylistic choice. Conns now function more like a vintage voice than a neutral standard, and the refusal to acknowledge that shift is what keeps the love-hate (and mostly hate) relationship alive.
And the Conn sound is utterly unique, I will give it that. Her defenders are sincere. But for her haters, Conns are just too difficult to play. The juice just isn’t worth the squeeze. More metal is used in their construction, making them heavier and less responsive. They are out of tune. They are more difficult in the high range.
Ease of playing is a far better predictor of a player’s quality of sound than any given model of instrument ever could be.
Depart with me from the niche instrument to the niche-ier.
My brother is a pedal steel guitar player. He recently let me pay a visit to the world of highly specific pedal steel meme-ry. What I learned quickly is that players of pedal steel and the modern double French horn share an eerily familiar story of rivalry and cattiness between old and new. It’s the kind of beef that only hyperfixators with highly specific interests can muster, because everyone else is too busy showing up to jobs that don’t require a disorder on the DSM-V as a prerequisite for employment.
Pedals were added to lap steel to create the pedal steel in 1940, a bit after the time the modern double horn became dominant. The philosophy of the addition of pedals to the lap steel was very similar to the philosophy of the addition of a change valve to the horn: “Hey, this is hard. Let’s add something to make it easier.” Fair enough.
Buddy Emmons then revolutionized the pedal steel through his playing in the two decades to come. Like Conn lovers who will eschew functionality so long as it’s mixed with enough nostalgia, many pedal steel players feel that the era of Emmons is as good as pedal steel manufacturing ever got. Newer pedal steels don’t have the sound, the soul, and the warm fuzzies that the old pedal steels have.
Pedal steel players with a more modern sensibility offer a compelling counterargument: Old pedal steels break. Constantly. Players would rather spend time actually playing the instrument and not “making trips to the hardware store.” This is such a common phrase amongst pedal steel players that a meme page on Instagram is actually called “The Hardware Store,” appropriately named for vintage steel lovers who spend more time tinkering with their broken instruments than actually wailing like Big E. With certain players, “The Hardware Store” meme page went over as well as a surprise dressing room photo from Bill VerMeulen.
Pedal steel players don’t want to spend their time going to the hardware store, and while horn players don’t literally go to the hardware store to fix our instruments, we absolutely go there metaphorically. Our hardware store is sucking in Tonka Truck breaths just to push air through the massive wrap of the Conn’s main tuning slide. It’s the painful back pressure in the Conn’s high range. It’s the missed notes while three hours into an opera that we just know would have sounded stellar on a pea shooter Geyer wrap or a triple with a cheater high F key. When Julie Landsman retired from the Met, most of those other eight players stopped going to the hardware store and bought different horns. They put their Conns back in the case. Can we blame them? What costs should we expect to normalize?
Confession time: I am a bonafide Conn 8D lover, and at times I have been one of its greatest defenders. I love the old school, I love the old New York sound, and I love how it feels to have that sound come out of my bell after months on the triple or a Geyer. “Ah, I’m home.” The trips to the hardware store don’t seem so bad when that burst of artistic, aesthetic joy speaks to one’s soul.
The Conn is fabulous on a microphone (I always use mine when recording unless a piece has greatly extended technique like Nick DiBerardino’s “Burr”). Its legacy has never been at stake on movie recordings for this reason. The Conn can be great when everyone in the section plays one—San Francisco Opera, National Symphony, Cleveland. But even in these situations, I prefer when sections play Conns on a curated selection of pieces. Sections should look at each piece on their program and ask themselves if playing a Conn truly serves the music in front of them.
I will cop out at this point and say that I truly don’t know which pieces those would be, nor do I have any great desire to be the tone police. Maybe we can all agree on one thing: The philosophy behind gear should always be one in service of artistic intent rather than comfort zones, ego, and tradition for tradition’s sake.
Is the logical conclusion that the Conn is a period instrument, as many a cheeky devil has “joked” about online? I don’t know enough to say. I would prefer to call the Conn a vintage alternative, useful when the time is right and a serious Achilles’ heel when the time is not right.
-QF
About
Those interested in learning more about Conn should read all available works by Dr. Margaret Downie Banks. She is the foremost expert on the man, his history, and his musical instrument company. Her life’s work is also on display in Vermillion, SD, at the National Music Museum if you are lucky enough to be in that area.