Hi Kittybritton,
I used to play descant, treble and sopranino recorders but haven't for quite a while - your post's inspired me to dig them out and have a play. As you say, the music can be heartbreakingly beautiful - but most people only associate the humble recorder with painfully out of tune squawking. I did teach it to school children and was very fussy about the tuning and tone! I have come across some very poor teaching in the past. I doubt many adults would want to invest in lessons to learn themselves. Though perhaps posters here are more likely than the average person to be able to teach themselves.

MJ   

I love this record:

http://www.musicscape.co.jp/cd/mscd0006.html

I played any sort of recorder I was given, descant, sopranino, but mostly the treble. I learnt a lot of baroque music that way, and still have a great fondness for it.

Goodness gracious me!

I'm a clarinettist by trade but recently rediscovered the recorder. I've been splashing out a bit in the last little while trying to find some recorders that don't cost too much but sound OK. My local music shop has a big stock of old Zen-On instruments they're letting go for half price so I have a treble and a bass - the latter in fact for a piece by Richard Barrett I'm playing next week which I used to play on his plastic Aulos.

But I've just this minute finished having a bit of a tootle on a plastic Yamaha tenor - my ensemble owns it so I took it home for a try. The right hand needs to stretch a bit so for the small of hand it might not be such a goer but the sound's nice and full and has a good bite to it even when it's me playing. So I've had to buy myself one and it's on the way.

I'm told the plastic Zen-On trebles are great value too - about the price reiner mentioned for the Mollenhauer 'Dream' descant. (My Zen-On treble is a maple one which is light but has a nice personality, I think.)

On the other hand while I was in Basel recently (I'm still sort of there but have come home to Köln for the weekend) I treated myself to a Küng garklein. Half the size of a soprano. My hands barely fit on it but it's quite an amusing sound. Except when I take it up high. That's not amusing at all. 

I was given a beautiful pear wood Mollenhauer descant for one of my birthdays - probably my 12th - which has a lovely mellow tone but it's harder to play than a good quality plastic one. The sopranino's fun but too shrill to play too often. My favourite's my very smoothly contoured, dark wooden Schott's Concert treble. I see that one of the Recorder suppliers in a link above has made some very disparaging comments about Schott's recorders but my treble has a lovely tone - it doesn't resemble those pale, beech wood school recorders at all.

I was lucky enough to hear and meet Michaela Petri (playing with her mother and brother in London) - she was very inspiring and gave me treasured words of encouragement. She had her audience on the edge of its seat, playing some incredibly difficult virtuosic modern stuff - shame I can't recall what it was, maybe I'll find the programme one day. Normally I wouldn't want to hear such modern music but this was amazing. Not only were her fingers and tongue wonderfully coordinated but she appeared not to take a breath for several minutes at a time! Of course the Baroque pieces were very lovely and beautifully played. I must purchase that recommended CD.

MJ

There is some controversy about this, but I have always oiled my wooden recorders - by which I mean I take them to pieces, cover the finger-holes lightly with scotch tape, and then flood the bore with oil (light almond oil is considered best).  Leave to soak for about 5-10 minutes, pour the oil out again (you can keep it for future use) and then wipe thoroughly clean using a rag tied to some stout string (shoelaces for trainers are ideal).  Then leave to dry thoroughly for 24 hours.  If you feel confident about this, you can "knock the block" (a light tap with a dowel from the opposite end usually dislodges it) and oil the head-joint whilst the block is out.  Obviously you have to put it back afterwards (!), but really anyone who has ever done a Fischer-Price toy can do this...  it only fits in one way.  Oiling is best done once every six months, but once a year is better than nothing.  If you really feel unconfident about it and you have an expensive instrument, most makers or repairers will do it for you for a nominal fee. 

My feeling is that this greatly improves the instrument's imperviousness to water absorption, and you can play on it for hours without the problem of it becoming "soaked".

I find the opposite problem with plastic recorders - because they soak-up nothing at all, if you find yourself playing a gig in a cold venue (as something like 80% of baroque music concerts are held in gloomy churches?) your breath condenses in the channel and the instrument starts to gurgle   How many times have you had to whip-off the head-joint, muffle it with a duster and huff down it to clear the condensed water?  It makes a lovely "tfui!" noise in the middle of Bach cantatas  

Having said that, if you are playing in baroque music versus modern string instruments, your lovely Von Huehne or Coolsma Stanesby copy can tend to disappear entirely - they're just too quiet.  For those occasions when I find there are 4 desks each of first and second violins,  I keep an old Dolmetsch plastic treble with a bore like a howitzer, to give myself a fighting chance.  I bought a weird-looking resin treble last year in St P, made by a Korean company called "Angel" (the model is Angel-AARB-131A) - I needed a second treble in a hurry.  It cost just 12 pounds, and it's amazing - it's like a clone of a Moeck Tuju, it speaks perfectly across two-and-a-bit octaves and it's blastingly loud for use with modern orchestras.  I've never seen them on sale since.

I suppose you won't be surprised to find I'm watching the Coolsma, reiner... still at 200 quid although with 4 days to go I wouldn't be surprised to find it ending up at about what you would pay if you could even find one in the shops (which you can't).