Yaaa…we guts enuf sucky ones awready ! 
It reminds me a conversation that happened to me:
Me: yes, it’s really a saxophone, a soprano saxophone.
He: no it’s not curved, it must be a clarinet
Me: the two instruments are very close to each other, but a clarinet has a cylindrical bore and a sax a conical one, and the key systems are quite different. And some soprano saxes are actually curved, bass clarinets are curved, too.
He: no, that can’t be a sax. walks away
Well, it was close to that 
Putting on pedant’s hat, they aint free reeds. 
In a free reed instrument, the reed itself produces a note of fixed pitch.
They are beating reed instruments, where the reed beats against a column of air which is of variable length and thus pitch by varying fingerings. Hmm. No symbol for smug bastard.
Removes pedant’s hat, looks at melodeon, shrugs and wonders whether to play shrunk oboe or sideblown saxophone as it is made of metal. 
Anyone ever see that clown, Andre Rieu, on PBS? He’s a classical violinist who hosts these really elaborate, cheesy concerts. Cool thing , though, is that right behind him sit two people playing simple system flutes. He is German, and the concert a watched was in Germany, after all.
This reminds me of when I saw “Heaven Can Wait” as a youth. I couldn’t get over him playing a Golden Clarinet.
Harpmaker wrote:
“If you really want to have fun and mess with their minds, or enjoy the “What is that?” type of question, take a mountain dulcimer along with…”
Been there, done that. Playing mt. dulcimer in public is guaranteed to stop traffic. 98% of folks haven’t a clue what it is, and then there’s the 2% who have one in there closet, have never bothered to learn how to play it but want to tell you all about it.
Play your flute with a mt. dulcimer in your lap and you’ll never lack for attention of one sort or another.
Don’t mean to be the penultimate pedant, Il Friscaletto, but Andre Rieu is Dutch, not German. Not sure how this affects his flute-life (or anyone else’s) but the old boy an sure play a mean fiddle!
My mandolin has been accused of being a banjo before. I also had some guy on the street ask me if it was “like a bass”.
Me: “No, not really.”
I like to watch the musical productions of Andre Rieu. I have seen the flautists playing the wooden flutes, but I assumed that they were playing modern, Boehm-style blackwood flutes. If you look closely, you can see these being played in orchestras in the USA, as well.
Hey Matt_Paris - Have you had your soprano refered to as you “Kenny G” saxophone?
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
His stuff is not enjoyable for me. On another forum board someone wrote that Rieu makes Lawrence Welk seem like John Coltrane. <yuck, yuck>
Best, John
Antique Collectible Sax-o-Flute -One of a Kind EBay Item number: 150077906508
Already, already ! Cheezz…
heh!
it’s a whistle-o-flute, innit…
Nope, thank god, Kenny G is not very popular in France.
But I had my Rudall & Rose called a “lord of the dance” flute… Grrrr
I HATE that. Ukulele is worse tho.
Regarding Andre R, my folks (who are moderately musically educated) enjoy the begeezus out of watching him. Of course, they’ve been known to indulge in an occasional Lawrence Welk rerun too – we all used to watch the originals together when I was a kid and my grandmother lived in the house. It was a hoot. What I say is, anything that gets folks listening to music is great, and anything that helps entertain the older and frailer, so much the better.
Last time I was visiting, I caught sight of one of the wooden flutes in the background, and never did get a chance to figure what sort of system it was. Maybe I’ll have to look more carefully!
Linda
(No oboes were harmed in the writing of this posting!) 
Andre R, to me, is kind of like a car wreck. You can’t help watching!
I was subjected to Lawrence Welk as a kid, so maybe that’s why I like to make fun of him.
You won’t believe this: I actually had a fellow with no musical studies to him come up and ask if I was playing a cittern! I gaped at him, just about had a coronary from the novelty of it all, and bought him a drink. He was my bestest friend for the evening.
At a gig once, this was overheard regarding someone’s bodhrán playing:
Kid: “Dad, how is he playing that drum?”
Dad: “See, what he’s doing there is actually dislocating his wrist.”
The bodhrán player was, in fact, using a stick as you’d expect.
Both flutists play wooden Boehm flutes. It’s not always easy to tell but you get a hint from this picture:
