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Re: Loree, Laubin, Marigaux, Fox comparison weekend

Author: Hautbois Marigaux
Date: 2011-11-24 09:22

Dear Ms. Barash,

First, I have absolutely no doubt on the authenticity of the pictures and above all, on what purpose they have been taken : since one year, we have several musicians who have come to our workshop quite disturbed by the methods of the "highly regarded German oboe maker" to promote its own production against the other oboe makers. I must say this is quite annoying when I learn about your personal experience on the oboe.

In this regard, I am positive that your trouble could have easily been managed by our technicians, as we did for the other musicians living in Germany who had the same questions about their oboe being analysed this way : they went back home extremely happy and relieved with their instruments.

To answer to your various points, this is how Marigaux operates : there is not one single oboe, from our student to our professional line, from the new ones to the ones which have been serviced, which leave Marigaux without being tested and played by the person who tunes our instruments and who is the only one able to give a green light. All instruments must match our Marigaux quality and sound constraints before we ship them. We do not use a camera to proove this but various quality control steps and at the end, a highly estimated musician who is very strict on his judgment, and who has been the Master on the oboe quality for many many years now. Sound and mechanics are for us the most decisive criteria to let an oboe go.

Your oboe we received from the Swiss dealer earlier this year regarding your issues was tested and controlled the same way and frankly, after our service, it passed the tuning session with no problem. We have learned as a second step that you were not pleased and decided to change the top joint, after the long feed-back we received from the dealer, even if both the dealer and the technician team did not see really the point to do it. But we did it, as I wrote 2 days ago, "to make the musician satisfied".

In our process, we do not offer the choice of several top joints when we decide to operate a change and we never have been asked about it. The decision to change the top joint is done utimately, when the traditional repair process prooves to be unefficient, which is less than 5% of the repairs we receive. As a matter of fact, we always ask to receive the complete instrument in order to be able, after having made the new joint, to tune again the instrument as it would have been a new one and every musician who went through this process was absolutely happy to find this way "their original Marigaux". This is what we did for your oboe and after all the time spent on your instrument, I sincerely regret it did not please you at the end, even with the new top joint. Well, OK, this can happen.

Now, as I wrote in my first post, I was not sure if Marigaux had to reply to this forum thread as I knew I was, by doing this, opening the Pandora's box. But the terms you used implied I guess some comments from our side so please allow me now to close the box, at least from us on the Forum, as I have the sense this discussion could take much more time than needed.

I would conclude that you have picked an oboe which did not satisfy you and I sincerely regret and apologize about it : we have done, according to our procedures, what we think was more than necessary to please you but it did not work out and the Swiss dealer, at the end, got your money back. Again, I would be very happy to welcome you in Paris and introduce you to our production process which, in any case, does not create "disaster oboes" and use "poor quality wood", etc... . So feel free to contact us through 'contact@marigaux.com' if you wish to continue the discussion on your personal case.

With best regards,
------
Renaud Patalowski
Président
Marigaux SAS
www.marigaux.com

PS : Marigaux is not an isolated ivory tower and we try to take into account all the feed-backs - and they are plenty - to make our instruments always better. Thank you to all the musicians who show their interest in our production, also the ones on the Oboe bboard and also on this thread.

contact@marigaux.com

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