Printing

I would like to know from several composers who have a little more experince than myself if they print their orchestral works on to A3.

My university says that the orchestration I am using 2+1 2+1 2+1 2+1, 43211, Timp Perc, Harp Celesta Strings would fit on A4. I know there are study scores which are smaller still but I think it would look much neater for submission to places on A3.

Anyway the reason I am writing this is that I am planning several submission to summer schools and I have been offered a new printer for christmas. I have free choice but I am thinking either an A3 printer or I could get myself a laser printer.

I haven't even got a printer - I print everything at my university's printers because we get free printing.

And then I use a little bit of cheating and I print A3 pages for 5p each instead of 10p each, whenever I need them.

I also nick all of my A4 and A3 paper from the school. And I re-use all the paper that has one side empty for all my sketches, notes, memos, anything that doesn't required printed staves.

As far as I know, A3 printers are a *little* bit more expensive than normal ones, plus you'd have to buy the paper yourself (which costs more), plus with each A3 page you spend more ink, thus more money on ink too.

My opinion is, unless you think you're really going to need it now and in the future, go for something else.

But to be honest, aside from all these things, I really like the idea of having an A3 printer home, but I just don't know how practical it is (it's definitely not practical for me at the moment, but it might be for you, so evaluate your situation specifically)

A3 scores are definitely useful, and most conductors will copy their scores into such a large formant anyways, if it's using many staffs. Personally I have however never felt the need to get an A3 printer, mostly because sending/transporting your scores is so much more practical in a smaller format, and the conductors can still easily enlarge a A4 score to A3. (Also consider that while A3 is great to see all details in a score, it's a bit unwieldy, so if a jury has to look through lots of submitted scores, A4 might actually be more practical - as long as everything is still easily readable and not too small.) And in the cases where I find it important to create an A3 score, I do it like jujimufu and use my university's printer.

When you have lots of scores in different versions to print out, it can even be annoying using an A3 inkjet printer, because they can be quite slow (and there's twice as much ink they have to put on paper as on an A4 score), so in most cases printing it in A4 and then enlarging it in an A3 copier works just as fine (even though the quality might not be exactly as good).

Personally, I find laser printers incredibly sexy. I don't have one myself, but given the option to get one, I'd grab the opportunity. They're so much faster, plus they don't need new ink every couple of weeks (don't you just love it that everytime you have to print out something important your inks are empty?) - and I rarely print anything in colour, so a black-white laser printer would be sufficient.

When you are in the finishing process of a larger score and have to print it out repeatedly in order to read it (and the parts) through for corrections etc., you learn to value a fast printer - whereas you only need the A3 printer for the real final version, which means you'll benefit from it much less often.

So personally, I'd go for the laser printer. But to each their own!

I think quality trumps size and that's what you'll get with a laser printer. It's more practical, it's hella fast and it's pretty constant on the quality. Like Gardener said, A3 may not be the best choice for the sake of transportation/practicality, and most people who want to work with larger scores can enlarge an A4 to A3 score real simple, provided that the quality of the A4 isn't horrible (and that's where a laser printer's quality shines, right?)

Plus, you can enlarge the scores you want in A3 yourself rather easily too, so think about it carefully just how much do you need these things and see for yourself what is more practical to have at home.

PS: Oh for the sake of reference, I have a laser printer at home and I do all the enlarging/etc at a copyshop whenever I have to, which isn't very often at all.

Just for reference:

A4 is similar to our 8.5x11

A3 is similar to out 11x17

................

I do all my scores in landscape, 8.5x11 simply because I can print it and I can read it. Were I to sell or seriously publish anything, I'd reformat for 11x17.

Keep in mind that A3 printers are an order of magnitude more expensive than typical A4 printers. My laser printer that does A4 (and legal - 8.5"x14") was about $450.00 two years ago. In contrast, the A3 laser printer I'm looking at starts at $1400.00 minus goodies like duplex printing (a duplex version costs ~$2500.00).

I think I will see about a laser printer then.

Thanks all for the advice.

I got a pretty decent laser printer for 95€... but then again, the conversion probably sux in dollars.

You can get basic monochrome laser printers for less than $100... More than adequate for my purposes.

$85 2 years ago... :hmmm: Still workin'!! (Too bad the toner costs almost as much ...)

@ Flint - $450!! You must have some SERIOUS printer!! One of these?? :

It's a very nice (and quite sturdy) HP laser printer with a duplexer. Worth every penny! :)

I ordered a second hand laser printer - it was only

Not an excellent choice, I'm afraid.

I have a lovely HP 1010 laserjet printer I got 4 years ago. It prints great, it works great BUT!

1. The cartriges (toner actually) holds for around 1500 pages, while other toners can go up to 7000! Huge amount of money loss!

2. HP will NOT issue Vista drives (or windows 7 for that matter) for this printer. Which means that I CAN'T use the printer with my laptop (on vista), but only on my desktop PC, soon to be changed

I will buy a new printer sooner or later.

So, I'm afraid that you made a poor choice... You could've bought a new printer with 60-80 quid, instead of an older, used one... :( I was in London and I wasn't online a lot, otherwise I would've seen this.

Maybe there's time to cancel the order? You're in the UK. Check on PCworld.com, or any other place where they may sell printers and get some serious info on some serious printers! Resolution plays an important part. Next printer I'll get will be 1200x1200! No lower than that, since I CAN actually see the lines in the current prints I make. And it will be faster, hold more pages, etc. Even an A3 is not extemely costly (then again it might be around 300 quid?)

Sorry for the bad news...

Not an excellent choice, I'm afraid.

I was out of town (so to speak) and didn't see your reply until now.

Anyway, I chose my printer after reading various reviews which raved about the quality of its printing and that toners will generally last 6000 pages - a claim backed up experiments. I even went to lengths to make sure I would be able to find toner for it when the time came and found that it was still standard on some current models.

So far I love the printer, and it works fine with Vista so I am really happy about it. The quality was much better than my old one - A HP I had for many many years. If I hadn't damaged the paper tray (by accidently wheeling my office chair rather hard into it) causing it to jam often. I probably wouldn't have replaced it at this moment in time. I am keeping it though because it has a scanner.

It might be a load of bull about the 6000 pages claim but as a former employee of Currys, I went through all the specs and for its age, amount of usage etc, and it was what I needed without being over the top. Only time will tell but even if the printer gets me through the next year or so, that's still worth the

Excellent news, girl! :) Thanks for keeping (me) us updated! :) I hope you'll enjoy printing.

I did found out that with NON HP toners I can go up to 4000 pages per toner, which is a big plus, but other than that Vista is no go for me, still! :(

Either way a new (awesome) computer is on it's way pretty soon, so I'll be fine with my new toy (not ordered yet, so don't ask...)