Hi there!

I'm thinking of restarting recorder playing after not doing it since i was in primary school about 400 years ago! Any thoughts, tips etc? Good books aimed at adults? Good suppliers on-line? Is it OK to get recorders off e-bay? In time, I'd like to re-learn descant as well as take up treble and tenor.

I'd be wary of getting instruments from ebay until you've done enough playing to be able to judge, I think. Other players will be able to point you in the right direction as far as the best ones to get - I launched straight into wooden student instruments but if you're wanting to have descant, treble and tenor, that would be expensive to do.
The treble has the biggest repertoire available to it, sounds good and isn't too stretchy for smaller hands, but is in F, so if you've only played the descant before, you'd need to relearn the notes for the same fingering patterns. I used Alan Davis' book and one by Hans-Martin Linde as my main tutor books when teaching myself, and bought as much music as I could afford. Saunders Recorders in Bristol here has a good range of music, and a helpful proprietor, and music generally arrives very quickly.
For those who like communal recorder-music-making, the Society of Recorder Players would be worth looking into - they have branches all over the country, and I know a lot of forum members have had fun with them.

I've just been reading on elidatrading's web site about clarinets from India It's the things you don't think to ask that are the problem... Who would think to ask, for instance, whether it's a Boehm clarinet or an Albert clarinet It would normally never occur to you that it was anything other than Boehm....

So I'm sure there are perfectly respectable recorders on ebay, and I'm sure many many MANY forum members have bought off ebay without any problems, but caveat emptor, as they say ....

We've bought several recorders from ebay which we have on the whole been quite pleased with. Just watch out as there are quite a few iwith Greman Fingering and they don't all say. there is one good supplier of wooden recorders that I could recommend but they are not cheap.


The disaster we had was buying a small wooden recorder, it doesn't say Garkleine Sopranino in it's description but you could be forgiven for thinking that it is. Anyway if someone sees these don't buy them as they are little more than a toy selling for around £50 to £60.

I would suggest starting with a plastic recorder - the Yamaha 302 series are very good and are pretty affordable, even new. An instrument for a tenner or so (descant) or twenty quid (treble) can't be bad.

What did you get as a wooden student instrument?

Moeck Rottenburgh treble was described as such, cost me about £75 rather a long time ago, and sells for between £200 and £500 now. My one is of maple, since when I've added a boxwood Moeck Denner, a boxwood Moeck Rottenburgh descant, a pearwood Moeck Steenbergen treble at a'=415 Hz, and a pearwood Dolmetsch tenor of uncertain type, on which I took pity because it was languishing in the corner of a dusty music shop cabinet.
*dreams of getting some handbuilt recorders one day, but dream spoilt by not knowing what to get first...*

You can get a perfectly respectable Yamaha clone (and if you get one in the black finish it will sound better too - sorry, Yamaha fans, but it's true) for something like £7 (descant) / £15 (treble). Sometimes whole sets go for a song on ebay, it depends on the time of the year. Genuine Yamahas are also cheap on ebay. My favourite plastic recorder is actually the Mollenhauer swing, I am totally at a loss as to why these have not become standard in schools, they are cheaper than the yamaha and are delightful but unfortunately they only come in descant. If you want wood then I can highly recommend the Mollenhauer Ninjo which again is delightful and again, alas, only comes in descant. Moecks are usually readily available used on ebay as well as new through the specialist shops.

Liz

I got paid for two evenings' work which I wasn't expecting and thought I might use the money (about £180 but I could add a bit more)to buy a wooden treble. Unfortunately my local music shop only has a Moeck Rottenburgh in maple. It will order others for me, but only if I agree to buy it, not just to try it. I already have a descant Rottenburgh in maple and wondered about trying a different wood for the treble.

After looking on various websites I had more or less narrowed my choice down to:
maple, pearwood or boxwood,
Moeck Rottenburgh or Mollenhauer Denner.

Any recommendations anyone? Is there a real difference between maple and pearwood? How do they Moeck and the Mollenhauer differ when you play them?

My two pearwood instruments actually sound softer and fuzzier than the maple one does, even though the wood is said to be slightly harder, but that may be to do with the construction. I would go for boxwood if you can - it tends to be brighter than either, and although my maple one has served me well for more than twenty years (albeit not solid playing because of the time when I wasn't playing at all), I know jo_clarinet doesn't like maple - she's said before that it warps easily, I think. Boxwood is the traditional recorder wood, and I'm wary of going for tropical species because of ecological concerns, and because my husband is allergic to rosewood and ebony. (Not a great allergy to have if you spend all day working on antique keyboard instruments... )

My comments regarding ebay have to do with the idea that the best way to buy an instrument is to try it out first, and I was thinking that this is more difficult to do if you have to buy it first. I think it is crazy for any outlet to demand that you will buy what they order - I know one shop wouldn't let me try two Moecks on the grounds that they were "the same" - codswallop, they can't be, they're different bits of wood, grr. My music supplier will send a couple of instruments on appro, and this may be the way to go if you want wood rather than plastic, but can't get to a sensible shop which knows its instruments.

I have boxwood Moeck Rottenburgh descant and tenor, which are very nice instruments, but my treble is a Mollenhauer Denner (in olivewood) because I found the Moeck trebles just a tad stretchy. If you have small hands you may need to try the two models out for size.