Has anyone here ever played or heard a Sterling Silver Howard Low D being played? If yes, what do you think about it?
Idon’t know why,but the combination of Sterling Silver body and Plastic head has always struck me as slightly peculiar.Plastic (or Delrin) fipple on a metal head,a la Copeland Sterling Silver low ‘D’, I could live with.
Incidentally,I own a Black finish Howard,which I suppose that I should really sell-the finger holes are just too big for my skinny fingers! 
I agree. And I also have a black Low D Howard which looks great and sounds pretty good too. My fingers are not exactly pianist-spec.!
Trisha, Wales
For some reason I don’t count Delrin (or any other high-grade acetal) as just “plastic”. There are cogwheels, full clockworks and even motorbike rear sprockets made of Delrin. This thing is to me closer to hardwood than to plastic.
It’s not brittle as cheap “pof” or PVC plastic, not Tupperware-soft as ABS. It’s machineable. It’s not some melted soup : I gather it has some internal structure akin to fiber or cristals. It’s just another category of materials, competing with wood.
We’ve got chemists and engineers around, I’m sure they could explain.
Now, what kind of plastic is this Howard head made of ???
Secondly, I wonder what kind of change in sound the swap of the tube material may achieve… if any. See, when I put my Kerry Pro Eb tube on the Kerry head, it sounds like a Kerry aluminium. When I fit it on the Grinter head (search this forum for “Grinterstein”), it sounds exactly like wood…
The Howard head is ABS, not Delrin.
Trisha