Don't know if this will of any interest to anyone at all. But maybe for some intense oboe nerd out there...

Like so many, I started oboe in a rental Selmer plastic oboe. I started directly on oboe at age 7. My piano teacher at the time, a man who'd recently immigrated to the US from Poland, also turned out to be an accomplished oboist but was immediately puzzled by the missing keywork of the Selmer.

A year later, my parents were told I was a promising young oboist but that I needed a better instrument. Somehow my mother set her sights on the Larilee company. A \*wooden\* oboe! I was told the instrument cost \*gulp\* $1000, an unfathomable amount of money to an 8-year-old in 1991. (I see from the price list, it may have been more like $1200.

The oboe was exceptional for grade school. Around high school, my peers started getting used Loree's. By college, I was still playing on the side, still on the by-then terribly inadequate Larilee. I finally upgraded to a new instrument several years after college. The Larilee is still in the back of my closet, getting more and more tarnished, but I could never throw it away or turn it into a lamp.

Anyway, cleaning out my mother's house last weekend, I found the 1991 catalog & price list with a few sparse notes. The Larilee oboes, I found out later, did not have a stellar reputation and the the company went out of business \~2008.

1991 Larilee Oboe Catalog