Bassoon Expertise

Seven crucial questions to ask when buying a bassoon

So you need a bassoon – but where do you start? How to decide what to buy, where to buy from, how much to spend and how to avoid buying a dud?

Re-discovering the French bassoon

The fate of the French and German systems of bassoon has, it seems, long been sealed. There is no longer much contest regarding which is more popular – the German bassoon has been dominant for several decades. But, in our bassoon workshop, we have just finished overhauling a Hawkes and Son French system bassoon for a customer. It is a beautiful instrument, made of rosewood, with a simple yet elegant design. In fact, we see these French system bassoons quite often, and enjoy bringing them back to playing standard – they have an otherworldly, historic charm to their sound.

Bassoons: repair and re-use for a sustainable world

Each year, manufacturing has an enormous impact on our planet – it is one of the world’s biggest contributors to environmental damage. By far the most sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative to throwing products away, is to repair and re-use them, or refurbish them and sell them on to be enjoyed by somebody else. The more we do this, the more we break the manufacturing cycle.