My daughter sent me this link. As the Monique flute I bought needs repadding she thought it would be cheaper if I went and bought one of these. I’m not really convinced and wondered if anybody else had heard of these flutes or whether they are like the cheap Pakistan/ import flutes that are poor quality?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=10183&item=2551538851
quote from the auction “THESE WILL NOT LAST LONG!!”
Sounds a bit dodgy to me 
Do they mean after 2 weeks they wear out 
just kidding
Brigitte
A new flute for that kind of money sounds suspicious when you consider that a top quality instrument can cost thousands. I suspect that it hasn’t had the mechanism properly adjusted and can cause a great deal of frustration due to leaks etc. This could mean an expensive trip to a repair person. As they say, you get what you pay for. Also, a novice doen’t need any more frustation than necessary.
If you want a relatively inexpensive flute, look for a name brand. Yamaha make quite a good instrument. I have a student model 225S (the S stands for silver plated) which has served me very well for a number of years and has required no repairs. You can usually find them on e-Bay for anything from $100.00 to $300.00. There are several inexpensive name brand instruments available. Do a search on the internet for “Flute World” for the name of some quality instruments and then go back to e-Bay.
Good luck.
Dave McRitchie
Toronto, Canada
I concur, you definately get what you pay for, the yamaha student model flutes are pretty nice though, I played on one for a number of years and it served me well.
I’d stay away from all flutes I couldn’t play test first (and I do a pretty thorough check), as well as all those a repair persun has looked at first and said that it looked okay (and generally that won’t happen if they haven’t heard of the brand name before). On top of that, I persunally shy away from E-bay as I’ve already gotten burned.
I visited the repair shop for a leaky G key today and the owner told me that Costco is now selling flutes, clarinets, and I think, trumpets. She looked at the flute, said it’s junk. They have a one year warranty, and she figures she’ll start seeing them in about a year, and will refuse to work on them.
The sad thing is, if the thing goes out of adjustment (and it will), your typical 5th grade student is only going to think “flute is hard”, and not get the enjoyment out of playing that can happen with a working instrument.
Leaks are part of life on a Bohm flute, but it takes experience to recognise when a problem is a leak, and when it’s bad technique.