![]() However, two of my students have fairly new 181s, which they had purchased before I started to teach them. Of the oboes I’ve encountered the early 181s were awful, with really soft keywork and poor intonation. The 181 has identical key work to my Marigaux but the bore is made of the same composite material to the 081. I’ve got a few students with the next model up that John Packer have been making for many years now. So when I heard about the 081 I was interested. But the price is a little prohibitive for many music services. I’ve played it twice now and was instantly impressed by the sound and build quality. But at £608 it’s still a lot more expensive than most parents will consider spending on an instrument for their child to start lessons on.ĭon’t get me wrong. As it has less keywork (and doesn’t have Low B or Bb) it’s much lighter. Unlike the S10, which can help a student progress up as far as grade five without too many issues, the Junior has less keywork and is only really suitable for a student in their first two or three years of study. Sadly their retail value is very high and most students are not lucky enough to find one for sale at a cheap price and most schools would not entertain that kind of outlay on a musical instrument.Įarlier this year, Howarth announced their Junior Oboe. ![]() Until recently it’s been the only instrument that I’ve viewed as being any good for students to start on. Their keywork, tone and stability are second-to-none. Granted, it is an absolutely wonderful instrument and wherever possible I’ve tried to help students find them. And yes, that’s for a student-level instrument, not a professional one. The replacement, the S10, is still a shade over £1,100 brand new Ex VAT. The Howarth B, which is the instrument that many a professional remembers starting on, is no-longer made. If I told you that my professional instrument would cost the best part of £5,000 to buy today you get my point. The oboe has always been so expensive to buy that many schools and perspective students are put off even before they’ve started. See, you can get a flute or a clarinet suitable for beginners and have change from £250. No, I’m quite happy with my oboe, thanks.īut for beginners there’s a huge quandary, not to mention music services who seek to help schools and students learn to play a musical instrument. The past ten years I’ve owned a beautiful Marigaux 901, an instrument which was hand-picked for me in 1998 and still has the wonderful tone I remember when I first picked it out of the case on the 27th December, 2008. For me it’s been wood all the way with my first Howarth B/Orsi to my Howarth S20 which helped me through my Grade 8 and into music college. Us oboists are quite particular when it comes to what materials our oboes are made of. In the (nearly) twenty years I’ve been playing I have never owned an oboe made of anything other than wood and metal. If you know me well you’ll know that I’m a hopeless oboe snob. Why? Because I’d quite like a cheap second oboe that I can take to places I don’t want to take my oh-so-precious and scarily expensive professional one. If I like it at the end of then I’ll stump up the £375 they want for it (or £319 ex. I’d mentioned that I wanted to get an oboe from the same company, John Packer Ltd to see if their ultra-cheap (when compared to the competition) student oboe was actually any good. As some of you know I’ve just replaced my Saxophone with a brand new one made at a shockingly cheap price.
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