Can anyone tell me abut Conn Oboes? I am know the one I am looking at is older, but it has been overhauled. It is on ebay (yeah I know the warnings about purchasing instruments on ebay) and for my daughter. We don't have $1000 to plunk dwn on an oboe. She would like her own as the school one she currently has is not good. She was playing oboes form other school that wer bettert han the one she has now.

Alright, when purchasing an oboe, first look at the company's site.

The Conn site has mainly brass, which they specialize in. This shows that they don't have much experience with oboes, seeing as they don't sell them in todays market.

Is it worth it? No. You haven't tried the oboe, you don't know when it's made, Conn is not ever known for there woodwinds, so why buy from them?

If you would like to buy a proper, decent student model oboe, buy a YOB241. It's cheap, plastic, has minimum trill keys, left F, no low Bb key though. It worked for me, no leaks, no repairs needed. It was simple and worth my money.

i do know some things about conn instruments. Conn is mainly brass and older woodwinds. I have a professional Conn Clarinet, and it sounds lovely. I trust conn instruments.

I do not like Conn instruments at all. Once, I had to have an oboe repaired by a music store chain. They gave me a rental that was a Conn, and it was worse than the oboe I sent off to be repaired. What you could look into instead of paying $100 to ebay is to find a music store that does a rent-to-own policy. This way, you pay a set rate per month, and when you rent the instrument so long that you have payed the selling price of the instrument, you own it. That's what I did for my oboe.