Hi all,
I have a nice piccolo in D for sale, it was made by Swiss maker Erwin Oesch senior. It’s marked “Oesch Basel”, and on the back the serial number “8”, which means it’s either the 8th piccolo he made or it was made in the 8th year since he started counting, so it’s either from around 1965 or around 1973. The family business is still very active nowadays, with Erwin Oesch junior that provides piccolos for the famous festival in Basel.
The body looks like cocuswood, while the lip plate is in some type of synthetic material (as far as I know, Oesch junior doesn’t use wood anymore). It’s a simple system instrument with 6 silver plated keys, it has the very same fingering of the 6 keyed flute used for Irish music, but with the pitch of a tin whistle in D. All the keys work great, and the springs have a guide dug into the wood to keep them in place and efficient, a nice feature. The holes are interestingly both under and “over” cut, and quite big compared to other simple system piccolos I’ve seen, which makes it manageable even to people with fingers that are not super skinny. The bore is also relatively big.
It’s a very nice player, it can be played very loudly if desired (you may want to use earplugs when practicing high notes!) and yet it has a sweet birdlike quality of sound. Unlike some other piccolos, the low octave has a nice and full tone. The “wings” around the embouchure hole are meant to help directing the air into the hole. It plays at modern pitch and it has a tuning slide. It comes with its original cloth case.
Asking price for this high quality instrument is only 320 euros that includes standard international tracked shipping.
Here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWPdpKmWUME
And some pictures:
