3 x wooden crown az F flutes for sale
Iam Looking for offers on these 3 F Flutes folks ,
Ill hopefully have a few photos soon but anyone who knows the maker and the model will know the craftmanship and the Quality involved , anyone interested you can reply in Private by PM .
SOUP
Looking forward to the pics. Are they at modern pitch or high pitch? I believe the majority of Crown A-Zs were HP?
Yes Jem HP , ill hopefully get the Photos on soon .
SOUP
Thanks for the info. I feared as much. Unfortunately that makes them of relatively little use/interest outside the flute band world, (at least the part of it that persists in using HP instruments) where I believe Hawkes Crown AZs command prices way beyond what any other HP F or Bb band flute is worth. I don’t doubt or deny their fine quality - on the contrary. It’s just such a shame they are not more useful to those of us (the majority) who operate at A=440. Good antique keyed F flutes that do play at 440 are also worth a fair bit these days, not least because they are a comparatively rare part of the historic output.
Hi Jem
I tried my Hawkes f flute on a Korg tuner and it was playing at 440 according to the tuner and also tried another flute i have and it played at 452 any ideas? Is this what you class low and High pitch as i sometimes get baffled like for instance the e flat Hakwes i have, ive been told its a d sharp and an e flat low pitch but it blends in with our band flutes which i always believed are high pitch.
I think in ITM terms the Hawkes may be low pitch but to marching bands they will be classed as high it gets confusing 
David
Hi David.
Yes, the terminology about pitch does get confusing, not least as it seems to have meant different things in different places at different times!
Current British usage is that HP refers to old British late C19th high pitch, between A=445 and 455-ish, with the bulk of the available HP instruments being at about A=450. By that token, LP implies A=440.
If your Hawkes plays at 440, we would now call that LP and the one at 452 would be HP.
Eb and D# are the same thing - “enharmonic” notes - different names for the same thing depending on where you approach them from (though in the Baroque period and in non-equal temperaments they had/have slightly different pitch values too!!!). That (the nominal home diatonic scale) has nothing to do with what pitch standard the instrument is built to. Extra confusion comes, however, from the fact that such an instrument is a semitone higher than a concert flute in D and so might be referred to as being higher in pitch. Plus, depending on the pitch standard an instrument was built to, a High Pitch “D” instrument at A=450 is damn near the same actual absolute pitch sound as an “Eb” instrument built at A=440!
If you test your Eb flute against your tuner with the tuning slide open an average amount (about 1/2") and the 3 finger note (“G”) gives a G# on the tuner set to A=440, you have an Eb flute at what we now call LP. If it gives an A or thereabouts, it’s HP
The complications with stamps chiefly come from the Continent, where Germany and France persisted with lower pitches in the A=430-435 region well into the C19th, so referred to that as LP and anything higher, including 440 as HP - thus we find some instruments marked LP that are lower than 440 and others marked HP that are at 440! Bottom line, especially with instruments made on the Continent, is don’t assume a stamped pitch marking means what you might think - check the actual instrument if you can, or at least look at its sounding length measurement. As the German instrument industry in particular made plenty of instruments for the British market, these things do turn up! For some reason both German and French makers used the English abbreviations “LP” and “HP” if they stamped such information on their products. I’m pretty sure that Boosey imported instruments from continental makers (judging by key-work on flutes I’ve seen) and sold them under their brands. (That is not to say such things were inferior, BTW - French made ones in particular can be very good.)
This recent eBay item is perhaps a case in point -
- from the keywork I would say certainly French made, despite the English language stamp, and from the overall length I would expect this flute to play at or near 440 notwithstanding the stamp - what we now regard as HP F flutes are mostly about or under 19 inches overall length, though without testing/knowing the sounding length one cannot be certain. Crude calculations done by measuring the photo suggest a sounding length for this eBay flute at c17" - which would match two A=440 F flutes in my posession and contrast with one that plays bang on 450 which has a sounding length of 16.5".
So, SOUP, roll out your photos and overall/sounding length measurements please!
Incidentally, the keywork on the band flutes set in this picture (which I believe are Hawkes Crown AZs?) is also French style, save on the Bb “bass”.
Jem thanks for the reply
it was defianately the 440 light that illuminated but im not sure if the note i was playing was an A?
The F Flute is roughly 19" as you said and going by that i would say high pitch as well cuase when im looking for HP i use those measurements and roughly 11" for an E flat Hp Piccolo And 14 1/2 to 15" for Hp B flat.
So tell me more about the tuning bit would all notes on a low pitch flute illumintae the 440 light or does it have to be the A note?
Regards David
It’s not that simple, David. I’d need to know what sort of tuner you have (not just the brand name) and what it measures/shows as well as what fingering you were playing on what instrument!
Most tuners measure with reference to equal temperament pre-set note names based on A=440. Some can be calibrated for different pitch standards (My Korg can be set to between A=438 to 445). Some will show you how flat or sharp you are of the nearest note-name reference pitch (which they indicate) in Hz or cents, others will more simply tell you you are flat or sharp (so which way you need to shift), or bang on for a particular note. Guitar tuners often just do standard tuning for the 6 guitar strings. Some tuners are diatonic, others chromatic (i.e. are referenced/calibrated for all 12 equal temperament semitones). [You can get pitch detectors that just tell you what frequency a sound is in Hertz without referencing it to arbitrary divisions/labels, but few of us have such.]
So, I can’t guess at what you were giving to or getting from your tuner from what you’ve said so far.
The simpler tuners on the market should let you work out whether an instrument is at A=440 or not, but probably won’t tell what it is at if it isn’t A=440!
As many of these C19th instruments in any case have dodgy internal tuning, just trying one note won’t be good enough to be sure, and if there is a tuning slide, where should you set it?
My suggestion for trying to determine if you have an A=440 instrument with a basic A=440 ET chromatic tuner goes like this:
First, if you have a tuning slide, open it about 1/3rd of its span as that is the likely design expectation (allows for both sharpening and flattening as necessary).
Next, play the 6-finger (home-key-name-note, nominal “D”) of the instrument and see what the tuner tells you it is and whether it is sharp or flat. Note that down. (6-finger notes are often flat of the rest of the scale, so not decisive!)
Next, play the 3-finger note (nominal"G") and again note what the tuner tells you it is and whether sharp, flat or on the nose.
Next play the 2-finger note (nominal “A”) and note it likewise. (2-finger notes are often sharp in the scale, so again, not decisive.)
If you know the nominal “key” (home diatonic scale) of the instrument (same thing as 6-finger note), count off up the scale to find the fingering that will sound a “real” A (on an “F Flute” that will be the 4-finger, nominal “F#” fingering, on a Bb it will be the 0-fingers nominal “C#”, etc.), venting any appropriate keys if present, as that is what the makers would have expected/tuned for, and see what that gives you on the tuner.
If you get results that are close to “in tune” for note names that fit the scale of the name-key of the instrument, you probably have an LP instrument, or at least one that is tolerably playable at A=440. If they are all consistently sharp or are hitting the next semitone up note-names on the tuner, it is HP, but you won’t be able to tell at what built pitch standard without a more sophisticated tuner, though if you get consistently roughly in tune at a semitone above expected notes, then it will be between A=450-455.
Aaaaargh. My brain hurts. Does that make sense?
Hi Jem
Right i think you have hit it on the head here. What you are saying makes sense i think this tuner stated whether you were sharp or flat if i remember correctly and always seemed to say 440. I used this to check the e flat excelsior sonorous flute to see if it was the same as the one listed on ebay by Olwell. So i could have came to the wrong conclusion.
I have a covered hole piccolo i think by what is being said here is Low Pitch, i would like it ideally to be Hp can it be 1 rebored or 2 the distance from embouchere to first tone hole shortened or would this Bugger the whole scale?
Thanks for your time David
We’ve strayed rather from the origins of this thread (sorry, SOUP! I’m still intereted to see your flutes!), so, without going too far further off, you’re right, David, neither of the things you mention would satisfactorily re-tune your piccolo. The scale would indeed be distorted by the second method and the first probably wouldn’t change the pitch much, but would mess up the voicing and intonation. Better to put your effort and funds into finding an HP piccolo.