Author: jhoyla
Date: 2011-01-13 07:32
An acquaintance who bought his son an oboe on an auctioning web-site of dubious repute, brought it round for me to take a look at, and it is indeed a strange beast.
The instrument is a Boosey and Hawkes plastic, thumb-plate, ring-system, with fully-automatic octaves! Who would design such a monstrosity? Surely not an oboist!
Why is this so strange? On a pure thumb-plate system (which this is - there is no con-bar to the lower joint) the LH thumb is lifted for Bb and C, instead of RH index finger. On fully-automatic octaves, the thumb is pressed on the octave key for all notes, from E to top C. Ergo, to play top Bb or C, you need to keep the octave-key pressed, but release the lower thumb-plate!
There is a badly-positioned 2nd octave-key on the side, but you need to rotate the whole hand to press it. Perhaps the RH index side-key is to be used instead of the thumb?
If anyone has met such an instrument before and knows the correct fingerings over the range, PLEASE let me know. I may end up teaching the boy ..
After some adjustment of the forked-F vent (over-tightened) and the 2nd-octave LH ring-finger connection (two complete turns!!!) I got the instrument to be playable over the the whole range, so on the whole my acquaintance was lucky; It only has a loose tenon cork that needs replacing.
Nonetheless, I hope this can serve as a warning to potential buyers. There are any number of weird contraptions out there that go under the title "oboe" and many of them are available on auction web-sites. Don't be tempted! Always go to a reputable dealer, and never buy an instrument without consulting a professional player or repair person first!
J.
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