I know, of course, we talk simple system timber here. But in case anyone had thoughts about getting an excellent Boehm/metal flute at a very reasonable price, I just got a Yamaha 200 Advantage flute, brand new for $500. It is the best Boehm flute I’ve owned, and better than many other flutes I tried that were 3 times as expensive. It’s mechanism and precision of tone/intonation/response is amazing for the price.
I tried many 200’s to find the one I bought. I think the ones made in Indonesia are superior to those made (assembled) in the USA (sorry to say).
I’ve tried some Yamahas…I don’t remember the model number…but I thought they were fine, capable instruments. I liked them much better than some “big name” flutes that cost far more.
Probably the best Boehm-system flute I ever had the privilege of spending some time with was a Rittershausen. It had the most unique sound of any metal flute I’ve ever played: thick, rich, warm, almost “buzzy,” and you could push the hell out of it, or back way off. It was a remarkable instrument.
Occasionally I see Rittershausen flutes go by on Ebay, but they are almost always far out of reach.
I have an inexpensive open-holed Boehm flute, but I find myself putting the plugs in the holes so that I can easily depress the keys using piper’s grip, a no-no for concert flute players. Forget about trying to cover the little open holes with piper’s grip like you can do on the simple system flute.
Jim, I have owned a Yamaha flute with a silver-plated head and one with a solid silver head. I didn’t play them side by side, but I can’t say that I was aware of much difference in the tone of the flute. At least with the solid silver flute, you don’t have to worry about the silver plating coming off, as is happening on my Chinese flute. Then again my Chinese flute only cost $150 new.
I sold a pvc flute last week to a woman who is a professional Boehm player. She is interested in learning Irish music and wanted to ge the feel of a simple system flute without spending too much money. She mentioned that her other flute was a 9 K gold Muramatsu flute with an offset G and a heavy wall. I offered her an even trade for her used flute in lieu of a cash payment for my flute. Shucks, she opted for the cash anyway.
i suppose there are those who will tell you that the sound or tonal difference between a nickel plate, a nickel-silver, a solid silver and a platinum headjoint is significant. i’m not convinced that it is… and that is based on a study i read awhile back in which a panel of experts were tested to see if they could discern by listening only what type of headjoint was being used. if i recall correctly… it was a double blind test. the players did not know, either (unless they could discern by lip, i suppose.) the results of the test were that nobody (on the panel) was able to accurately and consistently discern which type of material was used… (note to the boehm system flute experts out there: please don’t beat me up… i read it, but i don’t remember when or where. it’s been a long time.) this is an old, long running argument. personally, i don’t know that there is enough of a difference to matter to the average listener. perhaps, because as you upgrade from one material to the next the cost goes, people will “imagine” they hear a difference. me… i can’t tell. but, i can tell a good player from a bad one… maybe the expensive ones sound better because only the really good players can afford them? who knows? not me. just guessing on that.
open holes allow for a couple of things… in some forms of music in which the flute is utilized, i am told (but have no personal experience) that notes that are perhaps only a quarter tone sharp or flat are encountered. open holes allow you to manipulate the pitch to something other than the dictated half steps of a closed hole flute. you can also… as is likely obvious with the aforementioned… do things like slides from one note to another.
sometimes i play irish trad, sometimes i play airs (as opposed to having them?) i am a huge fan of the flute as a melodic instrument. it seems to me that historically in symphonies (and what i remember from band and orchestra,) flutes were always relegated to the overly high (and if i played often screechy) non-melody parts… but… to me, a flute is at it’s best when played melodically. especially when done by folks like Sir James Galway… or Joanie Madden… but i suppose that is all just a matter of taste. i reckon you could play just about anything you want on one.
the fingering is the same as for a clarinet or saxophone, iirc. with L1,L2,L3,R1,R2 and R3 down, the note produced is a D4. but xxx/xoo produces Fnat… xxx/oxo is F#. and there is a “keyed” thumb hole for C nat.
price can range anywhere from a few hundred for a student with plateau (closed) holes to tens of thousands for those very special jobs… a conservatory model such as mine will run somewhere around $750 to $1,500 USD. “Pro” models can range from $750 to as much as you want to be suckered for!
(as always… i am not an expert. the above is must my $.02 and baggage i’ve picked up along the way. if it isn’t right, don’t have a freakin’ coronary… just find the correct info and pass it on… the above was presented in the spirit of sharing and general conversation… i’ll leave it to the more anally retentive among us to pick it to bits.)
doug, i can’t believe she didn’t take you up on your great offer. maybe she’ll come to see the error of her ways and call you back to accept your offer of a trade.
(and, here again, if doug didn’t discern a great difference … but not flaking is a good thing!)
jim, I’d say you’re pretty much good…the material of the flute makes some difference in the sound, I think, as does the wall thickness, but just as with Irish flutes, the main influence on the sound of the instrument is the cut of the embouchure.
The open-hole keys are only very rarely used partially-open; the only circumstance I can think of off the top of my head is when playing “sensitive tones,” which was a nineteenth-century melodic device where some tones (leading tone, lower auxillary in a trill or turn, for instance) are played deliberately sharp.
I personally don’t think that the open holes make much difference in the sound; some will, of course, disagree.
A few years ago I rented a boehm flute for a month, just to play one.
It was playable, neither bad nor good. After awhile I missed the
irish flute. But the idea of a fully keyed flute made of silver,
or at least with a silver headjoint, that doesn’t cost, like 3000 dollars,
and you can buy, like, today(!) without waiting, amazes and
intrigues me. But at day’s end, I’m a folk musician, I’m not
going to play classical, I play ITM and american fiddle tunes
and blues and rock n’ roll, etc. and the silver flute doesn’t
much help me there. Thanks again.
Here’s Sir James Galway playing 16 different flutes of different materials, and I suppose- vastly different price classes- side by side. See if you can hear which flutes are made of gold, silver and nickel.
I had a Yamaha 200-series for a year or so before selling it on. It was a very nice instrument, I don’t have much to compare with as far as Boehm flutes go, but I like to think I know very nice instruments when I touch them
I have more experience with simple system flutes, but that’s like comparing cognac and
whisky
Here’s Sir James Galway playing 16 different flutes of different materials, and I suppose- vastly different price classes- side by side. See if you can hear which flutes are made of gold, silver and nickel.
I think you would find that the least expensive of those flutes that Sir James is playing still costs several thousand U.S. dollars…those were all high-end instruments.
I personally liked the Louis Lot, but that’s just me. The third octave on the gold flutes sounded very sweet but almost too thin.
i’ve listened to/watched that video before. he does have some nice flutes. but… i couldn’t discern enough of a difference that i would pay thousands of dollars. to me, they all sounded wonderful. i suspect that Sir James could make dougs $150 chinese silver plated flute sound wonderful.
the thought also occurs to me… electronics is a great equalizer. i listend to those very expensive flutes using a $500 computer and $15 speakers. how sensitive do ya suppose those things are?
my son was listening… he said,“i don’t hear any difference.” i wonder if anybody could turn their back to the monitor and speakers and successfully discern/identify the different flute materials used by Sir James.
The issue of what materials are used on modern flutes spills over into our traditional conical bored flutes. And the modern flutist is superb at splitting the hairs of the differences between them, more so than traditional players. I suspect that the material is less a matter of tone, and is an incorrect correlation. Many new student flutes with machine cut embouchures made with plated bodies certainly don’t play as well as a nice silver or gold flute with a hand voiced embouchure. Its the embouchure and perhaps other acoustical design aspects that make the difference. So the more expensive the flute material might better correlate to what attention has gone into the embouchure voicing. Go into the past and one can find hand voiced Louis Lots and Badgers, some of them not in silver but in plated brass, that play superbly - again with the hand cut embouchures. It may be that Yamaha has an excellent formula, and their flutes play well.
My wife used to have a lovely silver Sankyo open hole with B foot, gizmo key, etc. When she purchased it, she tried several different headjoints until she picked the one that suited her best. It was one of the best silver flutes I ever tried. Better than Haines, etc.
Occasionally I’ll get the occasional silver flute client who thinks this approach is possible and standard for my traditional flutes. I disappoint them. Unfortunately its not practical - so I offer only a few flute styles, as well as my preferred style of embouchure cut. I wish it were more practical but then again, I have found this to be unnecessary for most players - and it would use up a bunch extra wood and time!
I’m surprised at the comments and interest of this post. I thought it will fall like a stone down the board, into oblivion.
What’s so amazing to me about the Yamaha 200 AD is that it is the lowest-level, cheapest flute they make, yet it still plays great. The mechinism is different than any other I’ve seen and it’s just so precise and smooth, particularly for a screw-adjusted flute (the high end flutes have to be custom adjusted I believe using precise pieces of cork or other material). The bottom notes boom and pop out, the middle register anf upper register are decent, but the tone is not that of the high end flutes, say $2000 up. That said, for a $500 instrument made of nickel silver, it sounds and plays great, i.e. huge bang for buck. I do play classical and am in a flute group that plays duets, trios, quartets in which I play a borrowed alto and even bass flutes at times, but primarily play on the Yamaha.
Most of the time I play my new Burns standard slideless in factory-2nd blackwood. But I enjoy playing the Yamaha when I have need of it.
Regarding materials, I think wood differences may effect tone more than metal differences to my ear. I’ve played a lot on mopane and delrin before now playing/breaking in a blackwood flute. I’ve played a number of Burns mopanes and find that the blackwood has a much edgier/popping tone (which I love for trad) than the significantly more mellow/not-so-popping mopane. Each note seems much more distinctive out of blackwood as opposed to the mopane which to my ear tends to run notes together more, i.e. less distinction. I thinks it’s blackwood for me here on out.
just wondering… how much of the tonal difference we hear between different woods is due to the embouchure cut and bore smoothness? is blackwood inherently smoother in the bore, or mopane, or rosewood, or whatever? is it the bore smoothness that translates to “responsiveness?”
mulling over the thoughts of "to what extent does the embouchure impact tone? to what extent do bore characteristics(smoothness, density, porousity) impact tone, responsiveness?
A zillion posts have been posted on these questions.
I share Akiba’s estimate of blackwood v. mopane,
and also I feel that boxwood has a characteristically
different sound from blackwood. Why?
My speculation is that the molecular structure of the wood
somehow colors the sound, but others say it does it
via the smoothness of the bore.
I know less about metal but I do think silver sounds different from
other metals, all other things being equal. Copeland silver whistles
(I’ve played the high D and low D in silver, nickel and brass)
have a characteristic sound. Also played Sindts in brass and in
silver. But this discussion won’t end
in my lifetime, I’m convinced.
Going a bit off topic (I started this post, so I feel I have license to stray), what I love about Irish trad flute playing is that it encompasses such a wide spectrum of playing styles and flute tones and technique (Mike Rafferty v. John Wynne, for example, or just put on one of the Wooden flute obessions cd’s). In the classical world, most players sound very similar, myself (in my humble way) included; hence a major reason why I left the classical world was due to boredom and disinterest in the repetoire. Thus, I think the Boehm flutes may be designed to produce a more uniform tone regardless of the metal, whereas each simple system maker may have a very different aesthetic sense of the tone and musical protential of his instruments. In other words, the Boehm makers have a more focused goal and a smaller spectrum of desired outcomes, as opposed to simple system flute makers who have a much wider spectrum and potentially disparate outcomes to choose from.
jason: i would guess that your observation is pretty close. it makes sense that uniformity is to be desired in an orchestral or symphonic setting. but, for trad and folk, individuality is favored over uniformity.
jim: i agree that bazillions of discussions on the materials topic has occurred… and are likely to occur again in the same numbers… that said… in my mind, it seems to me that unless flutes of different material are identical in every physical respect, it would be difficult to attribute the tonal characteristics to the material. embouchure, hole spacing, hole size, bore size, bore smoothness, headjoint design, headjoint lining, tuning slide material, the player, breath control (or lack thereof,) and on and on all contribute to that which is the final tonal quality of the flute. if any of those things differ between two flutes, how can one say it is the wood that makes the difference. one can’t unless all other variables are controlled.
there is no doubt that there are some woods that lend themselves to flute making and make much better flutes than other woods… blackwood, boxwood, mopane, rosewood, … i am sure that it was experimentation by early makers that led to this instrument lore. so, i’ll go along with the experts and seek out a blackwood flute… or maybe one of casey burns’ mopanes because they know much better than i… and, truth to be told, my playing is shoddy enough that a flute made from a shower curtain rod would likely work as well as not… so, not finding a shower rod flute, i suspect i will very happy with my M&E for quite a long time… it is more flute than i am player, i may grow into it in another dozen years or so… the same is true of my gemeinhardt’s. they are more flute than i will ever be player.
