Top Ten Best Moments of 2022

December 22nd, 2022

Top Ten Best Moments of 2022

2022 will, I am sure, be remembered for all the bad things that happened – war and threats of war, inflation, recession and general gloom and despondency. But rather than dwelling on the negatives as we come to the end of the year, here are 10 of our ‘bests’, ‘firsts’ and ‘mosts’ through the year.

• Our most distant repair customer ever, all of 9,000 miles away in Perth, Australia – for finger hole liners, tuning work and a service; talking of far-flung places, we also sold bassoons to China, Japan, Qatar and North America as well as various places in Europe

• Our first oboe servicing customer - we started offering an oboe repair service for the first time to the general public this year; we also serviced a record number of customers’ bassoons as well

• Our closest repair customer ever, 250 yards away as the crow flies

• Acquiring the oldest original bassoon case we have ever seen – a wooden case, with the 200-year-old Charles Rust classical bassoon it was made for still in it! The bassoon is perfect (after a service), the case not quite so much. But still pretty incredible we thought. The Charles Rust isn’t quite the oldest bassoon we have though - that is a Prudent which is at least 50 years older but, sadly, not currently playable without some extra work

• Our most expensive bassoon sale ever, approaching £50,000 – a Heckel 12000 series (in fact we sold two of them during the year)

• Buying lots of lovely machinery to make our lives easier and more productive – a digital readout for our big Harrison lathe, a CNC router, a ¼ ton milling machine and lots of other goodies. Now we have to work out where to put them all

• Finally getting into crook sales – after many years of building up a huge stock of crooks we finally decided to start offering them for sale, and have been very surprised at how popular they are

• As some of the crooks needed repairing we learnt how to do that as well (with help from some real experts in the UK and further afield), and now offer crook repair as a service to our customers

• Running a bassoon photography competition. With dozens of entries in our adults’ and children’s categories we were hugely impressed with the quality of the photography, showing that bassoonists have a multiplicity of talents. Strangely, the winner of the adults’ section (from Colombia) was third in last year’s poetry competition. Getting his prizes to him in Colombia was easier said than done!
• Finally, here are excerpts from two emails sent to us in December which cheered us all up no end so we finish the year on a high: 

  "I’m ever so glad I bought the bassoon. It’s wonderful to play and I’m learning all the time. In several months’ time I might be reasonably proficient on it. It’s the best £10,000 I’ve ever spent."

  "I am absolutely over the moon with my contra, it’s a transformation.  It is very apparent how much care and hard work has gone into the work and it is an absolute credit to you guys!"

Thank you to all our customers in 2022 who made it possible for us to run such an inspiring and fulfilling business.

We are sure we will have lots of ‘best’ moments in 2023, and look forward to announcing some exciting new initiatives in due course.