How we got here
Fifteen years becoming a bassoon maker
Ludlow Bassoons is a new name, but the story behind it began fifteen years earlier.
In 2011, Oliver Ludlow founded Double Reed Ltd. after several years spent buying, selling, playing and repairing bassoons alongside his university studies.
The reason was simple: fascination.
Why could one bassoon feel and sound so different from another? Why did some instruments respond naturally while others seemed to fight the player? Why did apparently small changes make such a difference?
Those questions shaped the business from the beginning.
Going deeper
We chose early on to specialise entirely in bassoons.
Much of our work initially involved student and intermediate instruments, and that remains an important part of what we do. But curiosity increasingly drew us towards unusual, historic and high-performing bassoons from makers around the world.
Finding them was part of the pleasure. So was understanding them.
Repair and restoration grew naturally alongside sales. Many instruments needed careful work before they could perform at their best, giving us the opportunity to see them from the inside: to play them, dismantle them, measure them, repair them, regulate them and compare the results.
Every instrument became an opportunity to learn.
Over time, the workshop grew, the work became more complex and our perspective broadened. We saw how different makers approached the same problems, how instruments changed through years of use and how surprisingly small alterations could transform the experience of playing.
Learning from players
The instruments themselves were only half of the education.
The other half came from bassoonists.
Over fifteen years, more than a thousand customers have bought bassoons from us, and we have worked on at least as many instruments in the workshop.
We have spoken with players from around the world — students, committed amateurs, teachers, historical specialists and leading professionals — about what they value, what frustrates them and what helps them play at their best.
Those conversations taught us something specifications alone cannot.
A bassoon has to work for the person playing it.
For many musicians, the relationship with an instrument becomes deeply personal. The right bassoon can become a trusted musical companion for decades.
Understanding that relationship has always been central to what we do.
Curiosity without end
Our interest in unusual bassoons also drew us towards the history of the instrument.
Over time we accumulated a collection of historical bassoons and, in 2024, established the Veriam Music Trust to preserve them and make them available for study and research.
Studying older instruments gave us another perspective. Each one represents a different maker's response to familiar questions of sound, tuning, response, keywork and the needs of the player.
Eventually, one question became impossible to ignore:
What would we make if every decision were ours?
In 2016 we began laying down maple for instruments that then existed only as ideas.
Years of research, design, experimentation, prototyping and workshop development followed.
The result is Ludlow Bassoons.
A new chapter
In 2026 we adopted the Ludlow name to mark this next stage.
We remain the same specialist business. We continue to sell, repair and restore bassoons and support the players who rely on them.
But we can now do something more.
We can take everything we have learnt from fifteen years of instruments and bassoonists and turn that knowledge into instruments of our own.
For us, Ludlow Bassoons is both a culmination and a beginning.
Fifteen years of fascination.
Fifteen years of listening, playing, repairing, restoring and questioning.
And the start of the next part of the story.
