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Top Joint Cracks - A Serious Concern?

Author: MikeC855
Date: 2015-07-05 19:28

I'm a long-time serious brass player - mostly tuba - but have developed apparently considerable skill on oboe, at least according to the band and orchestra directors in our area. I suppose "skill" means playing in tune. Most of my recent oboe work has been with symphonic winds and pit orchestras.

Anyway, I've been playing a Yamaha student model for ten years and it's time to graduate to a pro oboe. I auditioned the Yamaha 841L, and aside from better timbre consistency around the low-mid transitions, it played and sounded pretty much the same as my bargain-basement plastic horn. I was disappointed, but also encouraged that the cheaper instrument may have been pretty good to begin with.

Now to my question - I have read so many comments on and off the web about upper joint cracking. That was the primary reason I tried the 841L, with its plastic insert. I'm not an every day player, and in the off season the instrument may sit in the (climate-controlled) closet for weeks at a time. With this on-again, off-again usage, if I buy an all-wood oboe, am I inviting cracks?

And to the urgency... we are traveling to the factory next week to audition a Fox Sayen. I have read the raves here and elsewhere, concluding this is the horn that will best fit my playing style and the literature I most frequently encounter. Not to mention that my current ensemble director is enamored with a "dark sound", it can't be dark enough. Well, OK. Anyway... the Fox rep indicated that they would be happy to custom build a Sayen with plastic insert, but her reaction amounted to "Huh?? Why?" I responded that we would talk more about it when we were there.

So... before making the trek... are my fears about cracking overblown?

-----
Confounding band directors since 1964.

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