Where to Find Cheap Bassoons for Sale

For woodwind enthusiasts out there, it’s always a good thing when you can find cheap bassoons for sale on the Web, especially when you consider that the cost of such a cool instrument can run you north of $20,000 (for a top-of-the-line brand). For the uninitiated, the bassoon is a woodwind instrument primarily used for music that is played in the tenor or bass registers. It’s part of the double reed family of instruments, and due to the deep richness of the sound it produces, many people have drawn comparisons between it and the voice of a male baritone singer. The highest quality bassoons are made entirely of wood such as sugar maple or sycamore maple, while the lesser quality counterparts are usually manufactured from different types of synthetic composite materials, such as ebonite or polypropylene, which are hard rubber or hard plastic composites respectively. There are two primary designs of the bassoon, namely the Heckel system (the most popular) and the Buffet system. And no, Jimmy Buffet did not invent the latter design—okay, that was a really bad joke. Without getting too much into the technicalities of either system (because I have found through experience that this can cause the absolute worst of musical snobs to come out of the woodwork), simply put, the Heckel system is the German system, while the Buffet system is the French system. Again, just for clarity, the Heckel system is the most widely used type of bassoon today, but there are definitely hardcore Buffet enthusiasts out there, mainly in France (of course), but also in certain regions of South America, as well as Belgium.

So now that you have received a very compressed primer on the bassoon, how in the world can you find one for a decent price? This, of course, is a highly subjective thing, because it will depend first of all on the level of quality you’re seeking. If you’re a beginning bassoon player, you may not want to go all-out and snag a Fox Renard Model bassoon for well over six grand; you may want to ease into your development on a much less expensive model. Browsing through Amazon.com, I found some pretty awesome deals on a few Orpheo bassoons, where they had been marked down from $3,495.00 to $1,495.00 brand new (as of this writing). I’m sure that several more deals like that exist on Amazon.com, so definitely check them out as a potential source for deals. Another site for potential deals is SamAsh.com, where I performed a keyword search for bassoons, and ended up on a page where they were offering Fox bassoons, which normally retail for well over $6,000.00, for only $4,189.00. That’s literally a savings of around two grand…not bad at all. One more site definitely worth checking out is WWBW.com (Woodwind & Brasswind). They have several excellent deals on bassoons, with prices well over 40% off retail price (as of this writing). And last but not least, never forget eBay as a great place to search for deals on cheap bassoons for sale. I saw several decent quality brand new bassoons being offered for under $2,000.00, so it’s definitely worth a shot to check eBay out as well. Hopefully these tips have helped; may the “woodwind gods” be with you as you search for the perfect bassoon deal!