Antoine Courtois ACTOMA-1-0 Trumpet Lacquered

TL;DR this trumpet sounds and plays great and in this price range it’s the only possibility to have a quarter-tone valve.

This is my second Toma trumpet: the first one was the "vintage" version but it had a bent tuning slide so I returned it and got this one. Big kudos to Thomann for great customer support!

The pros:
* the sound is beautiful, very warm and maybe even has a certain "Maaloufy" quality to it, awesome!
* the quarter-tone valve is super fun and opens up a whole world of possibilites, including playing maqams and middle-eastern music.
* it is really easy to play, the high notes are quite effortless and it seems to respond nicely to even small quantities of air
* the lacquered version (this product) looks really nice and clean. In my case the vintage version was way darker than the photos and reminded me a bit of a style of doorknobs that was popular a while ago.
* the bottom caps are a bit heavier, which I like very much. Maybe slightly lighter than KGU Medium but similar ballpark.

The cons:
* both this trumpet and the vintage one I returned have leaking main tuning slides. This one leaks only slightly, so I just bought some Ultra-Pure Heavy Slide Grease (which from the looks of it could also be used to fix a leaking kitchen sink -- super sticky and dense) and it helped.

Random thoughts (not cons per se):
* the valves were too hard for my liking so I swapped the springs for something lighter — now they are great.
* might sound stupid but the case it comes with requires you to fully retract the main tuning slide: this can be problematic now that my tuning slide is covered in super sticky grease. I just keep using my Thomann Voyager case (the trumpet fits without any problems, even with the fourth valve)

All in all, I love having a quarter-tone trumpet and I'm grateful I could get one in a "student" price. I'm definitely willing to overlook some QC issues: other quarter tone trumpets costs four times as much. One last thing that might be helpful: it's not immediately obvious how to hold this trumpet and operate the 3rd valve tuning slide. What I did is study videos and photos of the great Ibrahim Maalouf to see how he holds this trumpet: it's a bit of an adjustment but after a few days it becomes second nature.