£30 vs £300 recorder! | Team Recorder

hello everybody i'm sarah and i'm a recorder player a while back i did a video ten versus one thousand dollar recorder to show the difference in quality between the two instruments you guys really liked it but a lot of you were saying that's not so useful for real life you really wanted to see the difference between a good plastic instrument and a starter wooden instrument so say between 30 and 300 so especially for you i'm gonna do this the early music shop in london have very kindly lent me two recorders to try out for you today at around 30 pounds we have the yamaha eco de alto and at around 300 pounds we have the merc rottenberg alto in maplewood yamaha i'm always a fan of yamaha instruments they're good quality and for 34 pounds 50 i think it is you can get a really decent instrument to start you off it's in this cloth zip case very nice they come with their own little um plug so the eco day recorder eco day is apparently a plant-based plastic i can just tell it's well made everything fits beautifully it feels very nice and actually the design of the recorder is based on instruments by rottenberg which is the same as the merc so they have the same design just a different material the sound how does it sound for a plastic instrument this is beautiful it's smooth and rounded and full it's in tune the notes speak really well i don't have the feeling that i'm playing on plastic what i notice with the low notes is that they're very rich and full but there's only one way of blowing them and if i try and give a bit more or less [Music] then you lose the sound i'm very impressed with the high notes they're not shrill at all they're really really smooth i imagine all these smoothed corners just hearing this instrument on its own i think yes great i've not tried the next recorder yet so let's see first why the difference in price well plastic it's made in a factory it has very minimal human intervention it's made by the factory machines which although are very good you'll get this factory instrument so the merck recorders at this price point are also factory instruments they're made of wood the whole body is made by machines but then there will be a human that goes and voices each recorder so you do have that extra bit of human musicality merc make beautiful instruments and to keep it in the 300 range i have chosen uh the recorder in maple wood it's the softest lightest word they often give quite a sweet clear sound so you see here on the merc this different coloured wood that is the block and the shape of the block on the inside of the recorder is what gives it its sound and this will be hand finished that is where you get a lot of the quality from a plastic instrument doesn't have a separate block it's just made in one go let's give it a play beautiful sound um i'm noticing two things one the range of possibility with this instrument is much greater the amount that i can blow i can manipulate the sound i can move around it's a bigger range but i do have to work harder to make it sound good so the yamaha could do this much and the merck [Music] it's a bit harder to play i have to be very precise with what i want but then the again the amount that i can do with it is much bigger i can go from sweet to powerful so if i play like this it sounds a bit more rough and if i play like it has this more smooth glassy feeling comparing the two so they look very similar obviously because they're both copied after the same rottenburg design rottenberg would have been the recorder maker that's how we make reconstructions of recorders these days we find old instruments and copy them you know what side-by-side comparison low notes [Music] hi notes [Music] [Music] middle register [Music] me fast vibrato [Music] um folk music as i'm playing and playing and comparing the two i'm just fearing so much more variety and depth and sophistication in the wooden recorder the yamaha is absolutely fine and it produces a lovely lovely sound but the possibilities of what you can do with it are quite limited in my professional opinion if you're starting out on the alto recorder and you want a good reliable in-tune nicely sounding instrument that speaks well go for the yamaha as a musical instrument it's really affordable and it can take you a long time and the merc this wooden alto it's just in another league so as soon as you're feeling ah i want something more i want to play give more in my music then maybe you're ready to upgrade to a wooden model don't forget that the sound of wooden recorders can vary greatly one is that this is a rottenberg model you have different models different makers that will give a different sound and feeling of blowing also you can get it in all kinds of woods now now there are discussions as to whether the type of wood affects the sound the scientific studies that suggest it couldn't but in my personal experience i have found that it does that's what i'll say argue about it in the comments i've done quite a few videos on how to choose a recorder also in partnership with the early music shop so i'll link everything below go and have a look through all of those and let me know do you play the yamaha eco deer or merc rottenberg i would love to hear about it as always you can subscribe to my channel by clicking on my face down here over here is the team recorder web shop where you can order stuff and up here is my video where i compare a 10 and thousand dollar recorder have a great day and see you next time bye

Channel: Sarah Jeffery / Team Recorder

Views: 45,216

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Id: TNDmZ7CyEQ8

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 03 2020