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Musical instrument for hire

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 4:57 pm
by vasu
My son is going to start Trumpet next school year. Our local council has stopped musical instrument hire because of budget cuts. I have paid for the year and given the contract. Now I cant find a instrument hire service. I do not want to buy now cause I am not sure how much ds will like it. Any suggestions for shops/website for renting Trumpet. Thanks.

Re: Musical instrument for hire

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 6:26 pm
by andyb
vasu wrote:My son is going to start Trumpet next school year. Our local council has stopped musical instrument hire because of budget cuts. I have paid for the year and given the contract. Now I cant find a instrument hire service. I do not want to buy now cause I am not sure how much ds will like it. Any suggestions for shops/website for renting Trumpet. Thanks.
DS1 decided he wanted to learn the French Horn and we were faceed with the same dilema. He said he wanted to learn but we were not sure he would stick at it. We found a local music shop that offered either monthly hire or a buy-and-return service. After doing the sums we opted for the buy-and-return. The gist of it is you buy the instrument outright but they give you a buy-back price if you decide to return it within 6 months, 6-9 months, 9-12 months or after 12 months. It worked out cheaper to buy and then return it 6 months later when he'd decided it wasn't for him (it would have remained cost effective up to about 9 months from purchase which coincided with the 3 terms of tuition we had to pay for up front). We were advised to buy a "learners" horn and if he had decided to keep up with the lessons we could have used the buy-back price to trade up to an "intermediate" horn. The major downside is you have to fork out the full price of an instrument on day 1 :( .

Re: Musical instrument for hire

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 6:43 pm
by doodles
Don't know where you are vasu, but we hire a trumpet from the local independent music shop, not sure if they have other branches but if you pm me where you are I will have a look for you.

Re: Musical instrument for hire

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 7:20 pm
by knightingale
hi, where abouts are you? My son hires his cello from a lovvely man who hires out all sorts of instruments.....you pay each term (working on a three term year). I pay £30 a term for the cello...not sure but think a trumpet is about £35 a term which is cheeper than most i think. x

Re: Musical instrument for hire

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 9:15 pm
by ourmaminhavana
It might sound strange, but have you tried contacting local brass bands? Before DS started learning to play the cornet we wondered where on earth to borrow an instrument and when I asked around was directed towards a marvellous youth band which not only lent the instrument free of charge, but even provided free tuition! This was last summer, one year on he is now approaching grade 4, plays in the band and has recently won the award for best new band member. :D

Re: Musical instrument for hire

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 9:57 pm
by vasu
Just doing a bit of calculation. Rental per month is minimum 10 pounds and a yearly contract. The total comes to £120. I saw a student trumpet ideal for my 7 year old for £100 pounds online. So should I just buy the basic model and be done with it?

Re: Musical instrument for hire

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2011 10:45 pm
by Looking for help
To be honest, I would buy the thing :D

We have been renting a cello now for four terms, from the school, and i think we've now paid for more than half. I only continue to do so because my son isn't big enough for a full sized cello. Once he is, I will buy a new one.

Re: Musical instrument for hire

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2011 8:00 am
by lara228
Hi, my DS has been learning trumpet for a couple of years but I didn't want to 'invest' in an instrument until I knew he would stick at it. Lots of music shops will hire a new trumpet and deduct a good percentage of the hire charge if you decide to buy it - we hired for 9 months and then purchased and got a discount to the value of 6 months hire - worth looking around. I would be very cautious about buying a cheap second-hand trumpet - they do develop problems if they haven't been well looked after - I just bought what I thought was an amazing bargain on Ebay - then spent £45 getting the tuning slide working (and was expecting it to cost a lot more - was just fortunate the repairman could sort out the problem).

If you live in/near North London, pm me and I can let you know where we hired from.

Re: Musical instrument for hire

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2011 8:51 am
by Thingsbehindthesun
In your case buying the instrument would be a better option rather then renting but finding a monthly hire company would be better than one that fixed you in for a year.

Re: Musical instrument for hire

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2011 11:54 am
by Y
Be very careful what you buy on line - there's an awful lot of rubbish out there, and much of it won't play properly. There's nothing more disheartening than trying to play an instrument that won't hold a note. Friends of ours bought a cheap flute (new) from a charity shop, and it was so badly made it couldn't even be fixed. Having said that, there's also a lot of good stuff out there. Talk to your local music shop - if they are any good, they'll be willing to give you impartial advice in the hope that if you don't buy from them initially, you may come back to them later. If you don't know instruments, don't buy without advice.