Hi, I was just wondering which would be better. I just bought a a silver plated Yamaha piccolo which has a cylintrical body and I was wondering if I made the wrong choice and I should have went with a Gemeinhardt piccolo which has a conical body. How do they compare? Is there a huge difference in the upper register on the Yamaha since it is not concical bore? Will this matter a lot? Is the Yamaha silver plated piccolo built better than the Gemeinhardt silver plated piccolo?

Googled from http://www.sheehans.com/

"Conical and Cylindrical Bore
There are two common designs of piccolo. Those with a cylindrical tubing for their body and those with a conical tube. The conical tube gets narrower towards the lower end and greatly improves the intonation on the piccolo. Most professionals play on a wooden instrument which are always conical.

Student instruments are usually made from metal or resin, sometimes wood. The resin and wood piccolos have conical bodies but until recently technology was not available to produce a cheap, conical, metal body and so most metal piccolos have a cylindrical tube with the associated disadvantages in tuning. A method has now been developed to use pressurised water to form the body and drawn tone holes simultaneously and so student piccolos can now be made with a conical body."

For what it is worth, a `conical bore` piccolo has a cylindrical head. The head end of the body has a bore around 11.5 mm, tapering to around 7.5 mm near the Eb tone hole, and then opening again to around 7.5 mm at the bottom end.

A `cylindrical bore` piccolo, like the soprano Boehm system flutes, has a conical head.

In these different styles there are probably differences in tone hole diameters and placements in order to get the scale approximately right. These differences would contribute to a tone difference.

To clarify something Pico wrote... conical bore metal piccolos have been around for a long time. They were made with soldered tone holes.

And some more info to contemplate, from an old Haynes catalogue:

"CYLINDRICAL BORE SILVER PICCOLOS: Many players prefer the cylindrical bore piccolo because it is more like a flute in tone quality and because the high notes can be produced with comparative ease...."

"CONICAL BORE SILVER PICCOLOS: ....Some players prefer this instrument because they feel the scale is more even thoughout the three registers than that of cylindrical bore piccolos."

Thanks, Piko, but I already new what they meant. Maybe now (a good repair person) can tell me which piccolo make they think will stand up better and think that is better built.
I already own a Grenadilla Powell for concerts, but I just needed a cheap reliable piccolo that I can loan out to the students in the band and play myself when mine is in the shop.

Now I am confused. I thought that a CONICAL BORE would make the piccolo in the upper register easier to play and the CYLINDRICAL BORE makes it harder, but Arak just said the opposite. What is correct? Don`t wood piccs usually have a conical bore?

Okay, nevermind that last post. I jsut re read what Piko wrote. Sorry.

If you have a conical and cylindrical Piccolo in your hand already then you should be able to tell whether you need to switch that back up piccolo to a conical as well.

If you can`t tell... I would assume that playing a cylindrical piccolo will have an adverse affect on your embouchure and breath support required for your conical piccolo. Just what damage neglecting your piccolo and playing only a flute would cause.

You should take your Powell with you and play test different piccolos against it and find a piccolo that responds as well. No two piccolos play alike.