Armstrong 308 Student Piccolo

Armstrong History
In 1931, William Teasdale Armstrong, a highly respected craftsman and a C.G. Conn shop foreman, founded his small flute repair shop in Elkhart, Indiana. Word of his skill and uncompromising commitment to quality quickly spread, and it wasn’t long before he was asked to manufacture instruments for professional musicians.

The proud Armstrong heritage passed on to son Edward, who apprenticed under his father and shared his father’s attention to detail regarding quality. Edward’s concern for quality went well beyond the crafting of professional level instruments. He recognized a need to provide quality instruments to a rapidly growing number of students and community musicians.

In the 1970s, Armstrong developed a “new” flute scale in conjunction with Albert Cooper. Prior to this new scale, flute makers would correct the tuning of A=435 commonly found on flutes by cutting the end of the headjoint to bring pitch up to A=440. While this served to correct the pitch in the center registers, all other octaves did not play in tune. Armstrong and Cooper collaborated together to create a whole new flute with improved performance. Changes would include a tapered headjoint, alterations to dimension of tone holes and tone hole placement. This redesigned flute would become part of today’s Armstrong 104 model flute.

In 1984, the Armstrong woodwind company was sold to King Musical Instruments, which later merged with C.G. Conn in 1985 to form United Musical Instruments (UMI). UMI later merged with the Selmer Company in 2002 and created Conn-Selmer, Inc.

Professional Setup
A new Piccolo is not released from us unless it has been completely setup in our shop first. This is because the setup on the instrument is of the utmost importance! Sometimes, a piccolo (regardless of who the manufacturer or the price point is) comes in needing 20 minutes of adjustments and then the very next one can require 2 hours! So if you were to get 5 of the same model right out of the box, they will all play different which leads people to believe that they are “good” or “bad” instruments… but the reality is that the one that was the best out of the 5 was likely the one that needed the least amount of work and on the flip side, the “bad” piccolo was the one that needed 2 hours worth of adjustments!

Once the same 5 instruments are properly regulated and adjusted to perfection, they become near identical & even the pickiest of players would be challenged to pick a true “favorite” one. However, since most stores do not or even can not perform this setup, the player never knows this and is simply relying on the luck of the draw. This is why we perform our setup in our ProShop before delivering your new Armstrong 308 piccolo to you. You trust us with your purchase and we want to make sure that you are rewarded by giving you your ideal instrument setup flawlessly!