Rodrigo Baladez assembles a valve section on a trombone at the Getzen Co. factory in Elkhorn. Getzen is the parent company of Edwards Instrument Co., one of two top U.S. makers of high-quality trombones in the Milwaukee area. Credit: Kristyna Wentz-Graff

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In search of good brass, some of the world's most accomplished musicians make their way to an industrial park in Elkhorn and a small workshop along a Washington County back road.

Wisconsin is already a national leader in such miscellany as ginseng, toilet paper and rat poison.

Add high-end trombones to the list.

In a niche of a niche - making not just trombones but trombones that meet the needs of musicians in major symphony orchestras - we loom large. There are just a handful of producers of trombones at this level, and two of them operate within an hour of downtown Milwaukee.

On the edge of Elkhorn in Walworth County, in an almost-windowless, metal-sided building, the Edwards Instrument Co. custom "fits" its horns to a distinguished clientele.

Sixty miles north at Greenhoe Inc. in Jackson, trombonist, inventor and self-described tinkerer Gary Greenhoe turns out horns that cost as much as $8,000 and feature the patented valve on which he built his business.

Both firms are among their tiny industry's elite.

"Gary Greenhoe is sort of a legend in the brass instrument and trombone-making circles," said Peter Ellefson, a music professor at Indiana University who plays often with the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

As for Edwards - part of Elkhorn's Getzen Co., also a brass instrument maker - it counts among musicians playing its horns no less than Joseph Alessi, principal trombonist with the New York Philharmonic. And James Markey, the Philharmonic's bass trombonist. And Craig Mulcahy, principal at Washington's National Symphony Orchestra.

"Let's say I'm driving a really nice Toyota Avalon and suddenly I'm getting a Ferrari - that's the Edwards," said another of the Elkhorn firm's fans, Cristian Ganicenco, principal trombonist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

"I like to keep my mind open and try everything that's on the market," he said. ". . . I can tell you that (of) everything I've tried, everything I've worked with, the Edwards gives me everything I want."

Greenhoe devotees turn up from Norway to New Zealand. Aline Nistad, principal with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, plays a Greenhoe and calls it "by far the most responsive and lively trombone" available.

On the other side of the world, Tim Sutton of the Auckland Philharmonia loves his "Greenhoe Bach" horn, a trombone that uses many parts produced by the Vincent Bach unit of Steinway Musical Instruments Inc., but customized and assembled by Greenhoe.

"It's magnificent," Sutton said by telephone as he waited for rehearsal to begin.

Horn tinkerers

As it turns out, the Edwards and Greenhoe firms share some roots and, at least from Gary Greenhoe's perspective, not entirely happily.

Greenhoe is a tall, bearlike man of 66. He has thatches of white hair on either side of a freckled dome, wears gold wire rims and sometimes speaks a bit haltingly, as though the words were winding their way through several feet of trombone tubing.

His father was a metallurgist at Buick in Flint, Mich., and Greenhoe grew up fooling around with mechanical things, absorbing some of his dad's expertise and, from age 5, playing trombone.

He learned the latter well enough to earn a music degree and, in the early '70s, to win a position with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, but he never lost his interest in how things work.

"You know, Milwaukee was kind of a unique place when I came," he said. ". . . There were a number of brass players who arrived here from around the country pretty much within two or three years of each other, and there were several of us who were just tinkerers. We sort of had a round table for years discussing trumpet designs or trombone designs or tuba designs."

And just down Highway 15 in Elkhorn was horn-tinkerers' heaven - an instrument-parts company called Allied Supply, jammed with brass tubes, bells and whatnot. Greenhoe and his symphony pals became regular visitors.

"A few of us would go down and spend a day rummaging through parts and old horns," he said. "We were always taking our horns apart and working on things at home, and it turned into a little mini-craziness, I think, that's kind of unique to Milwaukee."

Combo formed

Then, in the late '80s, Allied owners Thomas and Edward Getzen decided to branch into manufacturing trombones specifically directed at professional musicians.

The idea: Build horns in modular fashion and let players choose the combination of components that suited them best. At the time, said Christan Griego, development and marketing director for Edwards, no one was doing that.

And who better to help than the mechanically minded pro from the MSO?

The combination of the Getzens' manufacturing capacity with the design advice of trombonists Greenhoe and a young Iowan named Stephen Shires made for almost-instant, and somewhat surprising, success, Griego said.

"They didn't know what they had," he said of the Getzens and their crew in the early days. "They went to a trombone show and the next thing you know they were a year back-ordered."

Griego, a 39-year-old with a soul patch and a rapid-fire speech pattern sprinkled with musicians' slang (gig, chops, dig), is the heart and face of Edwards.

A trombonist himself, he helps players fine-tune their horns, listening carefully to audio files they send or making adjustments in the studio. To Griego, Alessi is "Joe." When Edwards and the New York Philharmonic trombonist designed a signature trombone, Griego repeatedly flew to the East Coast to listen to how the horn blended within the orchestra's brass section.

"Working with the pros," Griego said, "you have to know them personally, know their strengths and their weaknesses - even though we never talk about weaknesses - we just find what works best for them.

"I mean, these musicians, they're really like athletes, they really are, and every athlete has their capabilities. So you work within those."

Soured relationship

Griego never became a symphony player, but in some ways his background mirrors Greenhoe's.

Both are longtime tinkerers - Griego spent a good deal of his youth working on cars in Clovis, N.M., and he, too, is an inventor, with a patent pending on a brace that accommodates threaded inserts to subtly change the tone of a trombone.

But the two men didn't work together. The Greenhoe-Edwards relationship had dissolved well before Griego arrived in the late '90s.

It ended on a sour note. Greenhoe said he had a handshake deal to help the Getzens, but never got what he was promised financially.

It was the first thing he mentioned when a reporter called to see about including him with Edwards in a story about Wisconsin trombone makers.

"Well, did anybody tell you I designed all the Edwards trombones 20-some years ago?" Greenhoe asked.

He never took his allegations to court. His wife, Glenda, a retired MSO flutist, said it would have cost too much.

Neither Edward Getzen nor Thomas, who several years ago bought out his brother's interest in the businesses, wanted to comment.

A spokesman for Thomas Getzen said Thomas hadn't been involved in the arrangement with Greenhoe, and didn't want to "open up any old wounds."

But Glenda Greenhoe feels things worked out for the best. She said Gary's time with Edwards served him well as "his testing ground."

A few years after the schism, Greenhoe won the patent on his valve, paving the way for a small - four employees, 150 to 200 horns sold annually - but internationally recognized business.

Edwards, which shares a factory with its Getzen Co. parent, is bigger - 500 to 700 trombones a year, plus 100 to 250 trumpets - and at least as global. About 60% of sales are exports, Griego said. Japan is a key market. Germany and Holland too.

The company has always had a back order, Griego said, and the current wait is four months.

Talk to musicians and you get a sense of why both Edwards and Greenhoe have succeeded. They're not the only high-end trombones on the market, but they command respect from a crowd that tends to be demanding, idiosyncratic and attuned to the subtlest nuances.

"Both companies seem to listen to players and design according to what they sense are the players' needs and desires," said University of Wisconsin-Madison music professor Mark Hetzler, who plays neither company's trombone but rather one fashioned by mutual competitor (and former Edwards employee) Stephen Shires.

"I think that's why they are creating such great instruments."