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Re: Recorders

Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-09-20 14:46

Ken, as an amateur doubler, I agree with your advice about how to switch between clarinets and recorders. Plastic recorders, including those good Yamahas, are very available used, cheap, at yard sales. On any Saturday with good weather in a major metropolitan area or big suburb in the mid-Atlantic USA, you can come home with at least one Yamaha C-soprano for US$5 or less.

I bought all my recorders used at yard sales and flea markets and I don't know their dates, but my best wooden recorders (good tone, good intonation) are branded Concerto (German), Koch (handmade of rosewood), Dolmetsch and Sonata. I have some other individually good instruments but not enough experience with the brands to be confident about recommending them. I look for the models that come apart with separate head joints and foot joints, and that have double holes for F and G on the F-pitched recorders and for C and D on the C-pitched recorders. Intonation will be a lot better on those instruments.

Sometimes I pick up bargains on plastic C-soprano recorders to keep some on hand for kids in my family and among friends. I now look for the Yamahas. The Aulos recorders, made over several decades, vary in quaklity. Before I got so picky, I bought two Aulos C-sopranos. They had such bad intonation that I couldn't give either of them to any kid I liked, so I got rid of them at a yard sale for what I paid for them (US$1 for one and US$3 for the other). But I've kept a different black plastic Aulos C-soprano and an F-sopranino that aren't bad at all -- I could play those outdoors (and probably every rat in the neighborhood would come running). Hohners also span several decades and vary a lot. Hohner made a bunch of different models I haven't sorted out. Some of the wooden C-sopranos with ivory-colored plastic heads are okay and I've got a couple of pretty good all-wooden ones. Nonetheless, I'm not throwing any more spare change into Aulos, Hohner or Amman recorders. With Yamaha, you can be pretty sure it'll be playable.

Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
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