Richard

I reckon like everything else some people are better than others at hearing differences in pitch. About three years ago I was at an early music summer school and after a talk on temperament, there was an opportunity to "play around" with some of the kit the speaker used for demonstration purposes - in particular electronic tone generators. The School musical director was able to distinguish pitches 1 Hz different at 440 Hz - and with tones of different timbre. I think he was the only one who could. Most others could manage 2 - 3 Hz.

It's not uncommon to have to pull out the head joint of a recorder to ensure that two are in tune.

Now, what I would like is a descant recorder in Bb so I can play with Northumbrian pipers without transposing on the fly. However, I do not think I could justify the price for the amount of use such an instrument would get as it would almost certainly have to be a special make :-)