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Re: Advice needed on buying an oboe

Author: Dutchy
Date: 2008-02-29 12:45

Welcome to the forums.

...but I have to say, "whoa!" as in "slow down!" [grin]

If you've never played the oboe--which by extension means you're not sure yet that you want to do it in the first place--then what you need to do (unless you're filthy rich and spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on something that you'll use only once or twice and then stick in a drawer is no biggie for you) is to rent an oboe, for a few months at least, to see if you like it.

Then come back and we'll give you advice about which oboe to buy.

I don't mean to discourage you, because the world definitely needs more oboists, but the oboe is quite a bit more difficult to play than other woodwind instruments, the embouchure in particular being a killer as compared to clarinets. Over here, they start musical instruments in the schools in the fifth grade, which is 10-year-olds, and the kid clarinets are tootling away happily (and reasonably tunefully) by the Christmas concert. But the kid oboists (those happy few) are still learning how to get a sound out of their instrument that is less like a dying duck and more like, you know, "music".

So an oboe is not easy to get to know, and you don't want to be rushing into buying one before you find out whether it's for you, especially because oboes are not cheap. Good quality oboes will always run at least $1500 for a "student" oboe, and $2000 to $6000 is more the norm.

I have never heard of either of your two possibles, as I am not an oboe specialist, but it's possible that they're European makes. How much are they asking for your two possibles?

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