I have just been working on a brand new piccolo.

It turns out it cost the owner $150.

1. It came in for servicing because the metal part the head plugs onto had come unglued from the rest of the body. Not surprising, because the surface on which the glue was supposed to hole were far too small to hold reliable.

But also:

2. The trill keys were extremely jammed. I eventually dismantled them and found some very gooey stuff sticking the pivot tube to the shaft that goes through it.

3. There was a gap big enough to put a finger nail through, in the soldering where the embouchure plate assembly is attached to the head. I removed it to discover that the shape of the surfaces were way different, so no wonder the solder did not run into the gap. I reshaped and re-soldered.

4. The entire mechanism wobbled around relative to the tone holes, so the pads could never close reliably. That was because all the screws holding the mechanism to the body were loose.

5. Many pads leaked; a full adjustment of pad seating and linkages was required.

6. There were plastic protrusions at the bottom of tone holes, i.e. burrs from when the body was moulded.

7. One trill key pad cup was way out of line with the tone hole. I band-aided with a larger pad, strategically fitted.

8. While I was working, the F# key`s spring cradle fell off. It had been welded on, rather than silver-soldered. While I reconstructed this, another soldered part fell off, indicating that the solder used for manufacture had a melting point too low to stand straight-forward later repair work. I had to re-solder this item too.

9. The attachment of the F# key to its shaft was very wobbly. I used a band-aid approach. Anything else would have been far too expensive.

Note that the piccolo would not have played had I left any one of these items.

I finally got it operating and test-drove it. It plays quite nicely BUT....

10. The intonation is all over the place, some notes up to a 1/4-tone sharp, and others up to 1/4-tone flat. It would be impossible to play this piccolo anywhere near in tune.

The customer paid $150 to buy this. Then the customer paid another $270 before it was playable. It is useless to play with other instruments. I fully expect it to cost another $50 to $150 per year as more serious manufacturing faults emerge.

It most certainly is not a "cheap" piccolo.

So when a technician refuses to work on your Ebay purchase, be understanding.

I hope this thread remains readily available as a reference for those never-ending threads that start, "I found this XYZ brand instrument on Ebay. It is so cheap, and brand new!! - and I am so excited... Does anybody know any reason why I should not buy it?" - or words to that effect.

Just send them to this thread.

Thank you so much for taking the time in witting that post to all of us Edger.

The person would have been better off just throwing it away and getting a good brand.

Now you have me curious, what brand was this?
Those ebay sellers ought to be kicked off of ebay for selling that trash! As long as prices continue to go up for instruments, people are still going to buy those cheapo ones.

It is too bad that you couldn`t make a video of all the repairs that you did on this piccolo then send it into the company that manufactures them.

I would have loved to shown you that `so called` handmade flute that I was gullible enough to buy. I did get my money back for it though. I did take many pictures of it, if you are interested in seeing them.

The brand is.....!!**drum roll!**!!
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wait for it..........~~~~~!!!!!
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No brand at all!

No "made in". No model No. No serial no.

But brand is pretty meaningless with these. If you order a thousand or two dollars worth of instruments you can get them to put any brand you like on it. Wait for the "Kara" flute.

BTW "kara", in the Maori language, means "old man", or "form of address to male or female" :-)

Lol!!! Old man! Good thing Kara isn`t my real name then.

caveat emptor

Reminds me of a brand new flute that came in. Case and flute were obviously new. No name on flute, but case said Borg.

First thing I notice was 2 trill corks sitting in case. I slightly touched the other trill cork and it immediatly fell off.

Every single open pad was horribly leaking, no leak-light needed. The pads were also around 2mm to thick. The middle screw was tightend down so hard the pads were completely distorted.

I actually would have tried to fix this. I even quoted a really low price for the amount of time it would have taken to make this play. People still declined.

*bump*