A friend of mine in my concert band switched to the Bassoon this year and, being short on cash, bought a Nobel basson to play on. I made a thread and am consiering taking up bassoon myself, so I looked into the company. They are a company that makes Bassoons and other instruments and claims to be based in Canada. Their page has testamonials from many professionals that swear by them. However, their page doesn't say where they get their instruments from, so I thought an email would be in orer. They don't directly provide their email, so I used the contact form on the webpage and I don't have the message I sent him. But here's his reply.

Hi Mr Smith.
NObel Bassoon

My nameis Joss sales manager for Nobel
Thank you for the interest in Nobel instruments.
As you know most of the affordable instruments today are made in Asia, but at Nobel we have our instruments made buy the best maker in 4 differents Asian country.
Where the instruments are made is strickly confidential, we have our maker that work very closely with us.
My hard Rubber Bassoon is made to our specifications and only for Nobel !
We have a Maple Bassoon tha is made with canadian Maple, no other company does that !
at Nobel we work hard to be better and different.
We cherry pick all of our maker to have the best quality possible and over that we ask them for specific change in some model.
Long & McQuad sells our Hard rubber Bassoon, so you can enquier there.
We've been in buisness for 5 years and groing every year.
One last point, at Nobel every instruments is adjust and play tested before shipping in our shop in Montréal.
so don't worry about quality that's what we want to sell for the best price possible, and every instruments is warranty for a full year.
the owner and I are musicians.

voila, hope that answers all your questions.

ps; sorry for the delay we where in different conventions lately.

sincerly Joss for Nobel.

This confirms my suspicions that this is an Asian company. I just thought I'd share this.

Also, the compulsary question. Are these guys still worth considering?

And the owner edit button disappears once again. I'd just like to note; the student bassoon is still nearly $4 000, so they're not dirt cheap or anyhing. Their website is also very well done.

There's a lot of spelling and grammatical errors. And I'm sure any credible company would be happy to tell you where their instruments are made. And I've never heard of them before, so suspicions arise.