Author: Dutchy
Date: 2006-02-09 22:32
Selmers aren't "bad" instruments; they're merely "adequate' instruments.
I too started out with a rental Selmer through the local "band instruments for all the local grade schools" store. I rented it for the 8 months it took me to figure out that the "oboe thing" wasn't going to go away. I figure that for the 8 months, I had spent about what it would have cost to buy a good used Selmer on eBay in the first place, so I liquidated it and moved up to a Fox 333.
The neat thing about rent-to-own instruments, especially for beginners, is that it gives you an "out" if the "oboe thing" doesn't "take". If it had turned out that the oboe was too hard or that I really didn't like it, I enjoyed having the freedom to simply take it back to the store and only be out the X number of months' rental I had spent.
So for a kid who's only been playing a few months, unless he's just totally absolutely in love with his oboe--plays it every waking moment, is already starting to make his own reeds--I wouldn't be too hasty to drop $2,000 on a nice move-up "real" oboe, even a plastic one. Mother of three here, and I'm woefully familiar with how the sudden passions of our offspring wax and wane, how the hobbies come and go.
I'd give him at least a year of playing the thing before I started looking at buying a move-up oboe for him, if he's not at the stage where he's totally obsessed by his oboe.
Also, a really nice oboe, even a plastic one, is going to run you (ball park figure) $2,000, and that's a lot of in$trument to ask a kid to be re$ponsible for. Trumpets, flutes, and clarinets routinely run only in the low hundreds, not in the thousands.
If you do decide to get him one, invest a bit in some basic theft-and-loss insurance from your friendly homeowner's insurance person, it usually runs about $30 a year. That way if he leaves it on a park bench and it disappears forever, it's not a crushing blow.
If you're looking at oboes for kids, plastic IMO is the way to go, as wood runs too much risk (again IMHO) of cracking, and is a lot less tolerant of the abuse that kids can give an instrument like leaving them overnight without swabbing out. There are some very nice plastic oboes out there; plastic is not intrinsically "bad", nor is wood intrinisically "good".
There are a LOT of oboes for sale on eBay, but unless you know what you're doing, I'd definitely go with a reputable dealer.
Kessler & Sons gave me a really good price on a brand-new Fox 333 (plastic) through their eBay store. They seem to have a bunch of them in stock.
Carriage returns added so word wrap doesn't disable.
http://stores.ebay.com/Kessler-and-Sons-Music
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