I am looking to buy a good grenadilla wood piccolo and this one seems like it would be great for me. Have any of you guys tryed one before or do any of you guys own one? If so, what do you think about this specific piccolo?

Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful!!!! I have owned one for the past year now and I can`t say enough about it. I love it! I play the piccolo professionally, so I can tell you that I wasVERY picky when it came to choosing the right one. It has gotten quite a workout in the past year and I have not had one problem with it. It is definitely worth every penny. The scale on them exceeds my expectation, as does the quality.

They are on back order from the dealer that I got it from because they are so popular right now. I tried out just about every brand of piccolo (including the ones with a very high price tag) and it won me over. It is worth trying.

Definitely try it,but I preferred and purchased the Emerson Boston Legacy. I know I say this and most people immeadiately say Emerson? But the piccolo is exceptional and I greatly preferred it to the Burkart-Phelan Global Piccolo. However, with piccolos of this high quality (as with an instrument of any quality) tastes in instruments do vary by the player so try many of many price ranges and types.
Good luck with your search!

I really like the Emerson Boston Legacy piccolo also. Great picc for the price. I really prefer a more woodier sounding piccolo when it comes down to it. But, yeah, you should check that one out also.

I been looking around and I noticed that the Emerson Boston Legacy Piccolo has solid silver keys and the Global Piccolo does not. Does this really make any difference in the overall quality of the piccolo?

It makes about as much difference as sterling silver buttons would on your cell phone.

Marketing hype for the gullible? The silver itself would be worth probably under $10.

On the other hand, it does no harm.

It will probably allow the pivots to wear faster than if they were cupro-nickel, and that is probably a more important consideration for a piccolo than worrying about high quality silver plating wearing through.

Some people believe that sterling silver will forever have an excellent appearance. However sterling silver often has a grey appearance from oxidation during the heat used for soldering keys. So it is often silver plated to hide this (and cover the different shade of the soldering itself). If this is the case, then the more the silver plating wears off, the larger the area of gray sterling silver shows.

Very true. Great point.
I was told that that is also the reason why Powell never plates over any of the solid silver on their flutes. That is probably why you are able to see the solder on them and not on other brands.
Interesting....

As far as I know, The `grey scale` can be minimised by appropriate use of flux during manufacture, and possibly also by eliminating sulphur contaminants in the air during the heating processes.

After it is there, it can be removed at the factory by a somewhat tedious process of repeatedly heating the part and plunging it into a `pickling` solution. This process involves a degree of guesswork in how much it has to be done to treat more than just the very surface of the metal.

I guess that Powell`s approach is something of an ideal, used for higher quality jewellery, which adds to the manufacturing costs.

However another reason for plating over the sterling silver is that other trace elements can be added to the silver in the plating, which can greatly increase the tarnish-resistance of the surface. Note that the silver plating on old (Chinese) Lark flutes lasts a long time, but it tarnishes VERY readily.

Yet another COULD be that it protects the areas where dissimilar metals (the sterling and the soldering alloy) meet, from any electrolyte (perspiration or saliva, etc). Dissimilar metals in `electrical contact`, in the presence of electrolyte, results in `galvanic` corrosion that eats away at one of the metals

A DIS-advantage of plating is that the plating is a different alloy form the base metal. Silver plating has to be quite thick and carefully done to avoid microscopic porosity. If there is porosity in the plating, electrolyte can get into these pores to where the alloys meet, and again encourage galvanic corrosion, leading to the pitting of the silver plating that many of us have seen and felt on silver plated flutes. Of course this is unlikely to easily happen on instruments where the plating has been conscientiously done to a high standard.

It is entirely possible that metals added to the silver plating alloy also reduce the porosity of the plating, and make it more wear-resistant.

There are many other factors also to consider with respect to the quality of electroplating. There is a huge difference between high quality silver plating, and cheap, pretty-for-a-few-months silver plating to cover the marketing and guarantee period of an instrument`s life. This is one of the many reasons why the quality of manufacture of an instrument cannot really be ascertained until the instrument is several years old. This, in turn, is why buying based on a manufacturer`s past reputation is an important consideration.

BTW do you know if Powell leaves the Sonare keys unplated? Thinner, less robust plating is the cheapest option for a pretty surface that appeals to a buyer, and this is often one of the areas where short-cuts are made when one model is cheaper than another.

I have no clue as to if Powell plates the keys or not on the Sonare flutes. I wasn`t aware the sonare models came with solid silver keys. Then again, I am not too familiar with those models.

I have only had a chance to talk to the company about their Signature, Conservatory and handmade flutes.
I did read somewhere that Powell is noted for not plating anything on their flutes.

Good point about Sonare not having solid silver keys. I think you are right there.

If they are not solid silver, then they are silver plated `nickel-silver` (containing no silver), as for almost all good student flutes. Nothing wrong with that really. Nickel-silver, more correctly called cupro-nickel, is probably more wear-resistant than sterling silver anyway.

I cannot imagine a flute maker not plating cupro-nickel keys these days. The appearance looks too dull, too quickly, as with cupro-nickel coins.

I really have to wonder if Powell even has much to do with the bodies of the Sonare flutes. They are said to be made in Taiwan. I really think that the only thing Powell on those flutes are the headjoints. Yet they still advertise them on their website?

They are still good flutes, but the bodies of them has no characteristics of a Powell.

I will be visiting the Powell factory in August so I will make sure to ask a lot of questions when I am there. I have always been a bit confused on the back ground of the Sonare brand.

ONe realistically needs to be cautiously sceptical in the midst of optimism regarding Sonare, in light of so many other top brand woodwinds eventually compromising their names to substandard instruments.

A list would include Keilworth, Buescher, Conn, Armstrong, Boosey & Hawkes, Buffet (in my opinion recently), Schreiber.

Time will tell.