Ok, ok.. Now that I’m done crying and moaning over my lack or range – time for some REAL content. 
Sorry folks.  I haven’t thrown my equipment off a bridge…  yet.

As many of you have read, I have just purchased a new trumpet – the Zeus G. While I am planning to post my own review very soon, I wanted to share a review from a trusted friend of mine –
Patrick Gleason.  He’s a
great player and an even better person (rare qualities in a trumpet
player).  I value his opinion very much.

Fit and Finish:
All of the tubing joints looked really good but I noticed that the second
brace (closest to the valve case) off of the leadpipe appeared to be slightly
off. It should be perpendicular to the leadpipe and parallel to the other brace,
but it was just ever so slightly off as if it was "leaning" just a
tad. As for the finish, well, it’s raw brass, except for parts of the tubing
that appear to be either made of nickel, or plated in nickel. I will comment
that the buffing of the finished parts looked good.

Feel:
This horn is HEAVY! Quite a bit heavier than my Bach. Also, some of the
tubing, such as entry points for slides, appears to be of a heavier gauge than
that on my Bach. The valve cluster could be that of a Bach only the valves are
spaced just slightly further apart and they aren’t machined down quite as much.
(The external valve tubes are straight where on a Bach, they have some slight
curves for contour.) Also, we took off one of the bottom valve caps an my Bach
valve cap screwed right on with no problem whatsoever. The valves feel really
good. Very fast and consistent and I never had one stick or drag at all on me.
Sometimes with a brand new horn (this one is only a week or so off of the
production line) the valves tend to be a bit sluggish. These valves compare to
the valves on a Schilke more than they compare to the valves on my Bach. Fast
and silky smooth. Alignment? Not sure on this one because it probably takes more
than just the naked eye to determine if the valves are truly aligned and I don’t
really know any of that, however, they appear to line up exactly when they are
depressed. This is from pulling the first and second valve slide and eyeballing
where they line up.

Playing:
Solid core of sound and very consistent throughout. Intonation is probably a
bit better than on my hand-picked Bach Strad. The sound was on the dark side,
but had a nice warmness to it. I felt that it played fairly open, but not so
open that I didn’t have something to push against, but not stuffy in the least.
Slotting seemed to be pretty good too. The one thing that really stands out
about the sound of this horn and the way that it plays is that you can push it
pretty hard and play pretty danged loud and the sound won’t spread. I can get my
Bach to sound blatty pretty quickly but I’d have to really push this horn to do
that. This is probably due to the weight of the horn, but I’m not sure.

I can’t say for certainty that I liked this horn better than my Bach but it
is at least on par with it, which is saying something because I’m beginning to
believe more and more that the Bach that I have is a winner among the newer
Bachs. This would be a great quintet, concert band or combo horn in my opinion
but I’m not sure if I would want to use it in a big band or rock band situation.
Then again, I really didn’t get as much time on it as I would need to make that
determination. One thing that I will say is that I think it’s a steal for the
money. I do think this will be a great all around horn and
even better for combo, concert band or quintet.