The Renegade

If you ever attended a Titanics, Bombastadors, or late-era Stupid, Stupid, Stupid & Steve show, you would have seen me playing the Taylor Renegade. I bought this incredible, ridiculous, steampunky horn directly from Grand Wizard Trumpetmaker Andy Taylor in 2006, when he sold her to fund some other crazy custom brainwave or other.

The Renegade was one of the original Taylor Custom Shop creations, originally inspired by Andy watching a plumber work with compression fittings and thinking how much easier it would make his job if he could just bolt a horn together. The result was a one-of-a-kind ML 0.46“ bore Bb trumpet in raw brass, with a hexagonal bolt motif running through the bracing, thumb ring, tuning slides and leadpipe right up to the heavy matching mouthpiece. Andy‘s on record as saying that the design and build of the Renegade fed into what later became his signature Chicago series.

She‘s gorgeous to play. She has a warm, dark tone, and a vast dynamic range: from a whisper to, well… I don’t know how loud she goes. The more you put in, the louder you get out, and I’ve never managed to get the sound to break. Incredibly responsive, but also an absolute beast. HEAVY, and needs some serious air. This is not a horn you should play for the entirety of a two-hour funk show, take it from me…

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