Howarth of London (T W Howarth & Co. Ltd) have been the leading UK maker of oboes for over 50 years and the quality of their engineering is probably the best in the world.
The Howarth S20 is the best selling and most popular, intermediate oboe, ever made.
It has been produced ever since the early 80’s and its popularity, both with advanced grade students and with amateur players has never faulted. This is due to its reliability and its ‘just enough mechanism’ approach which makes it fairly light, but still gives it all the necessary key-work to make the players life easier.
The ‘c’ in S20c stands for ‘conservatoire’ and it is the version developed for players outside the UK. In the UK we generally play the ‘thumb-plate’ system (we have to be different of course). This one has the added thumb-plate (dual system) making it ideal for players who are used to playing a thumb-plate system oboe.