Import oboes..? Let me explain.
I am a drummer primarily. I’ve hopped around disciplines for awhile, but I’m settling on drums as a primary. That being said, I still record and produce music and I have always had a soft spot for the soaring Melodies on oboe and english horn. Being as I have already spent my money on good drums and cymbals… and… trombones… trumpets and saxaphones… and being that I do not play oboe in any performing sense, nor could I ever afford to hire an oboist to record for my personal tracks (I enjoy multitracking more anyways,) how bad are the Chinese oboes anyways?

I know that they are not fit for professional performance use and often have softer keywork that is more prone to go out of alignment, but is there anything redeeming about them? Can they sound good for home and studio use? Will they suffice for a doubler like me? Or is there really 100% no point in spending a couple hundred on one?

The reason I even ask is because most forums I have read often are coming from a place of “I want to be a concert oboist,” to which the replies will all be “invest in your career, you will need a good instrument, spare no expense” which I fully agree with. I don’t think oboe doubling is maybe as common of a perspective to this question. So yeah, if anyone has used them and had a good experience, let me know! I miss playing oboe…

In a pinch I bought an English horn reed from a maker I thought would be decent. The reed is fine, but it has nothing to secure it to the bocal. I find that when I play I end up pulling the reed off. As you can imagine, that’s a pain in the neck. I don’t make my own reeds (and I realize that is a cardinal sin), but is there any way to put tubing on a reed after it’s made so it doesn’t keep slipping off? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Personally, I can't recall encountering any situation where it really mattered whether I used the left or right D trill key.

Hi oboists — I'm the developer of Solfa. I tried a small, real English-horn-to-oboe notation example rather than a generic key change.

These are two bars from the Largo of Dvořák's Ninth, in an old Oboe II / English Horn part. The top panel is the scanned F-English-horn notation; the bottom is the actual Solfa output for C oboe. It is written down a perfect fifth so the sounding pitches stay the same. The written key signature changes from four flats to five. I haven't corrected the notes by hand. I checked the displayed pitches and rhythms, but this is only a two-bar excerpt; I haven't validated the whole part. Timbre and range across a complete movement would need a musician's judgment, and a player should proofread any generated part.

If you've ever had to cover an English horn passage on oboe, would a readable transposed part help, or is the different sound usually the deciding issue?

Disclosure: I built Solfa. The tool is at https://solfa-music.com. New accounts get two page credits after phone verification; further credits are paid.

Source: Dvořák, Symphony No. 9, Largo, Oboe II / English Horn, historical Simrock/Kalmus part, IMSLP #41075, PDF page 11 (printed page 3): https://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.9,_Op.95_(Dvo%C5%99%C3%A1k,_Anton%C3%ADn_Leopold))