A charming instrument with a bright, focused voice. This piccolo plays at A=440 with the tuning slide only slightly extended, and all keys and pads are in good working order. Response is lively across the registers, as you would expect from a well-sorted piccolo of this vintage. The body is cocuswood with German Silver keys. The head and barrel liners, rings, and stopper faceplate appear to be silver. Sounding length is 263mm. The instrument is in excellent condition for its age, showing the kind of careful restoration that lets a ninety-year-old instrument play reliably without erasing its character.
Restoration was carried out by Jem Hammond in 2025. Hammond repaired a crack in the barrel, which required full disassembly, and sealed a leak from the embouchure hole between the wooden and metal tubes without needing to extract the head liner. All buffer corks were renewed. The stopper cork and body tenon cork were found to be in serviceable condition and left in place. The original pads were extracted, cleaned, and refloated on fresh shellac. Beyond that, the instrument received a thorough clean and polish.
According to surviving Rudall Carte company records (information credited to Robert Bigio), this piccolo was completed on 22 June 1934 by a company workman named Braithwaite and sold on 20 January 1936 to a Chas. Taphouse of Oxford.
Note on terminology: this is a 6-key piccolo pitched in D concert. In transposition terminology it is sometimes referred to as a "C" piccolo.
Rudall Carte & Co. Ltd. traces its lineage through several of the most important names in nineteenth-century English flutemaking. The firm's roots go back to Rudall & Rose, whose simple-system flutes became the foundation of what players today call the "Irish flute." Through successive partnerships and acquisitions, the company absorbed the work of George Rudall, John Mitchell Rose, Richard Carte, and others, eventually operating as Rudall Carte & Co. Ltd. By the 1930s the firm was still producing high-quality woodwinds at their London workshops, drawing on decades of accumulated craft knowledge. Rudall Carte instruments from this period are well regarded for their consistent build quality and reliable intonation. The company's workshop records, which survive only in part, have been studied and preserved by researchers like Robert Bigio, offering a rare window into the day-to-day production of a major English woodwind maker.
Condition: Used - Excellent
Condition: Details:
