I’m wondering if anyone has any comments as to which one I’d be better off with. My gut feeling is that the newly made flutes would probably be better dollar for dollar. You have modern engineering, you can use modern materials, and the flutes are designed to play at a=440. Any thoughts?
I’ve gone both directions, and each has its advantages. The biggest advantage to an old flute is that you can usually get a really inexpensive keyed flute for cheap if you watch ebay for a few months. The biggest drawback is that you’re never quite sure what you’re getting. I got a couple of old boxwood flutes, both of which had amazing sound but tuning “features”. I never warmed up to keys, so these are in homes where they’re better appreciated. (I still have an old nach Meyer that belonged to my wife’s late stepfather. I’ll be in Charlottesville in a couple of months and will probably drop it off with Kara to be renovated. It leaks and has a stuck slide.)
You’re much less likely to get a dud from a modern maker. Plus all of the modern makers I’ve dealt with have been very honorable, will generally let you send the flute back after a year or two for a tune-up and re-reaming if necessary, etc. Many makers will also customize if you have small hands, flat lips, etc.
Just a note that I believe Kara now lives in Boston.
Second everything else you said.
I am a sucker for a good Olwell!!! 
I’d suggest going with a modern flute.
You’re right, in that modern flutes are designed to be in tune, A=440, and are less likely to crack or have other such troubles.
That’s not to say that antique flutes are bad, but, again, for everyday use I’d go with a modern one.
That’s redundant…
I thought they were made for blowing…
Do you really think that an antique is more likely to crack than a new made flute? I’m not an expert but I would have thought it was usually the other way around. Antiques are often cracked already, but that’s besides the point. If the antique is not cracked already, or has repaired cracks, it seems logical that it would be a lot more stable than a newly made flute.
Anyone care to enlight?
Otherwise, I agree that you’ll know a lot more about what you’re getting and have better guaranties if you buy new, but you could make a heck of a deal if you buy old. A fully keyed, and very nice and playable flute for less than what you would pay for a keyless flute from a top maker.
Antique flutes are usually cheaper than recently made ones, sometimes I wish it was the same way with
whisky 
I’m with Henke here. He’s right about the cracks issue. And not all modern maker flutes are good, even from named makers. I’ve played a couple of stinkers! On balance, yes, the tuning should be better set up for modern use and you have got come-back with modern made flutes bought new, but you can get decently playable fully keyed antique flutes that will take you a long way for the money when you can’t afford the equivalent new-made. I’ve written this many times now: unless you are quite sure (who can be?) that you will never want to play a keyed flute, you’re better off starting on one and learning to use the keys from the beginning. You can probably afford an antique to do this, but not a brand new 8-keyer. With patience and good advice you’ll get a serviceable antique 8-key for much the same money as starter keyless flutes by the likes of Burns, Seery, etc. Unless you can dive stright in to a Murray, Wilkes, Grinter, Olwell or whatever, regardless of what you start on you’ll need to upgrade later…
You know that old saying about how even a bad day at the ballpark/beach/wherever beats any day at the office? Well, even a bad Olwell beats most any other flute!
Show me one!
I did see one, once upon a visit to Massie’s Mill, that a dog had split in two like a soup-bone. Couldn’t get much of a whack off of that one, somehow.
Rob
You don’t say what level you’re at in your playing or what kind of access you’d have to flutes before you make your decision to buy. If you’re in a position where you have to buy based on name or reputation alone without having a chance to play the flute first (or if you’re not far enough along in your own playing to be able to tell whether a flute is good or not when you play it) then your only real option is a flute by a modern maker. The reason for that is simply because barring abuse or mishandling by a previous owner you will know what you’re getting with the modern flute. If it’s anything made by one of the makers with stellar reputations (Olwell, Wilkes, Hamilton, Brian Byrne, John Gallagher et al) then you know it will be a good flute, even without playing it. If it’s made by one of the modern makers with a lesser reputation, word of mouth should let you know that it might be good, or maybe not so much, and either you or another player you trust can and should probably give the specific flute a blow before you write a check for it. But if it’s an antique flute, all bets are off because the ravages of time will blur many of the distinctions between a good flute and a chair-leg flute. You really have no choice but to play the specific instrument in each and every case. Knowing that the flute came from one of the stellar makers like Rudall and Rose or that it’s just an old German nach Meyer tells you nothing. You need to play the flute to find out what you’ve got. In earlier generations when there were no modern makers, everyone had to do that. But now, with the ready availability of good flutes from modern makers, it really doesn’t make sense for anyone other than an experienced player who knows what they’re getting into to make an antique flute their first choice.
What, this isn’t Bizarro Flute World?
Yeah, and I imagine that one that fell off the top of the car when they forgot to put it inside before they drove off years ago was probably a tough player from then on too.
Actually, the last remaining piece of that one is happily tooting away…my old dogeared “Monaghan Jig” clip was recorded on it. Cheers,
Rob
It appears to depend on the design of the flute. For instance, flutes having some sort of internal metal sleeving apparently tend to suffer cracking troubles, more likely than those without. Most modern makers apparently avoid such sleeving, or keep it to a minimum, perhaps for just such a reason.
Also, virtually all modern flutes are tuned to A=440, but an antique could be tuned to any one of a number of pitches.
In all, I’d go with a modern flute.
I don’t know… I have had four flutes and all but one had metal sleeves that ran the full length of the head-joint (Flute with a tuning slide). I do know that some makers will do a tuning slide with an un-lined head. I can only speak for our area of Baltimore/D.C. but the majority of flutes with tuning slides are fully lined. To be fair, the majority of our flutes happen to be Olwell’s with a R & R, Hammy Hamilton, and Brian Byrne flute or two thrown in the bunch. Come to think of it, Laura Byrne’s Grinter is the same also. I have heard Patrick tell me that having the sleeving aids in the cracking department due to the properties of the metal. I am no expert, just saying what I have seen out there. It is very possible that most modern makers avoid the sleeving, I just haven’t caught on to it yet perhaps. 
Hey Jem,
I have found in the past that some beginners (including when I started) get distracted by the keys instead of learning the basics. I have run across a couple of players over the years that could play in F major and G minor and any other key for that fact but really didn’t have a grasp on rhythm, phrasing,tone or all three. I can stand before you and say, I was one of those people. 
I borrowed a flute that was a six key antique and started getting use to the layout and had a blast with the chromatic ability of the flute ( I played the whistle before and couldn’t get over the shock 
). I then stated taking lessons and found through instruction that all I needed was G major and D major to work on my basics and there relative minors. Just my opinion. I respect your comment completely, I just wanted to give you another perspective.
Cheers
The metal lining in a headjoint is not going to exprience the extremes of shrinking and swelling that an unlined tube of wood will, and thus the wood on the outside of the lining won’t be put through that either. It’s going from extreme swelling to extreme shrinkage too quickly that causes the wood to crack. And if you do get a crack in the wood of a headjoint that is fully lined it’s not really a big deal unless the crack hits the embouchure hole, because the metal lining is there to protect air from leaking out and destroying the sound of the flute. (Of course the crack should still be repaired, though, for cosmetic purposes and to keep it from spreading.) This is a bit of a side benefit to having a fully-lined head with a tuning slide. But the sound of an unlined head is much nicer and more “woody” in many folks’ minds, so that and the fact that it’s less expensive has led many makers to build flutes with unlined heads. Of course the downside of this is that there’s no tuning slide. It’s an attempt to get the best of both worlds on this compromise that has led some makers to start offering the partially-lined headjoints on their flutes.
John Kerr said,
“The metal lining in a headjoint is not going to experience the extremes of shrinking and swelling that an unlined tube of wood will…”
I disagree. While nearly all the HJs on my flutes have metal sleeves, there is good reason not to have a fully sleeved HJ. I prefer to have a metal sleeve for the sound, which is more focused and intense, but
#1: At times the wood HJ will dry and shrink - but the metal tube will not. Since the metal stays the same, the wood will split.
#2: The metal sleeve can expand faster than the wood and will put sufficient pressure on the wood to make it split.
So in point of fact the metal will cause more stress on the wood HJ than if the HJ were unlined. A Hj is likelier to crack if is lined than if it were not. For me a half-lined (French-style) HJ does not offer enough protection to be worth it – and I keep an eye on my flutes, so cracking isn’t an issue for me. But for those who live in a hot, dry climate and who don’t play very often, an unlined HJ offers a real advantage.
Metal tubes expand and shrink due to changes in temperature. Wooden tubes expand and shrink due to changes in moisture content. In the normal range of temperatures to which a flute will be (or should be) exposed, expansion and contraction of a metal tube is relatively small. However, the range of relative humidities that a wooden flute gets exposed to is broad, practically all the way from zero to 100%. This makes considerable expansion and contraction of the wood inevitable. If the wood in a fully-lined headjoint does crack, yes you are right that it is because it has dried out and shrunk while the metal lining does not. There’s nothing the metal lining can do to prevent extreme lack of moisture in the wood. But the metal lining does prevent total saturation of the wood due to contact with condensation inside the flute. Since any resposible flutemaker will ensure that he doesn’t use either totally dry or totally saturated wood to build the flute in the first place, having the lining in the headjoint will limit the range of dry-wet-dry-wet cycling in the wood from what it would be if the headjoint was all wood. This provides some benefit in reducing the possibility of a crack. But proper care and hydration of a wooden flute is always important, lined headjoint or not.