Just to throw my hat into the ring, I love my Cotter. I messed about with an Ormiston and then a De Keyser before I thought about getting a keyed flute. Having only really played for 18months I knew precisely nothing about anyone other than Mike Grinter, and his flutes were too expensive for a relative novice. I took advice from a friend whose opinion I respected in such matters, and he said he had a Cotter as his “reserve” flute. I guess there are certain places where you just don’t take an 1820 R&R!! He put me on to Eamonn. What a nice bloke, what a great flute player. He wouldn’t take any money until he knew I liked it. It sounds like a proper flute should, although it’s a better flute than I am a player, so by the time I’ve practiced for 5 years or so it’ll sound amazing. I know people who have Grinters, Wilkes, and Aebi flutes who have played my Cotter and love its slim size and dark tone. The only criticism, and it’s a minute one, is that the G# key is in totally the wrong place for my grip. I’m not the only Cotter owner I know who has found that problem. I get round this by just playing tunes in A on the whistle. I’ve hauled myself onto Pat Olwell’s list, so hopefully by the time I’m 40 I’ll have a top-hole flute for me, and I can give my Cotter to my son/daughter.
Or your great good pal Cat!
(sssh, yes I’m your pal, it doesn’t matter if you have no idea who the heck I am)
Of course, by the time you’re 40 (grandkids! sheesh!) I’ll probably be 80.
… Son? … Would ya help an auld woman?
I wonder if anyone has emntioned this key placement problem to Cotter?
Dave
Nope, haven’t mentioned it to him.
Although I have not played that many different keyed flutes, I believe the G# key is a problematic little bugger on many flutes.
It tends to be too far down to reach comfortably with the pinky finger of the left hand. Come to think of it, comfort does not enter playing the keys on a simple system flute 
Terry McGee has an interesting article on his own improvement of the
G# key.
Makes sense to me.
cheers,
Jeroen
Is the G# really a problem? All tunes I play in A, I just use the G as I suspect do the majority of trad. players - makes the tune go into A mixyodian (if that’s how you spell it) or A Dorian if you play a C nat as well but isn’t that the ‘true’ nature of lots of ITM tunes in A.
I can see the G# key being useful for the odd slow air. My tuppenceworth.
I didn’t mention it for 3 reasons. Firstly, as I said, it’s such a minor thing to quibble about. Secondly, being new to the keyed flute, I found that I play a relatively small number of tunes where I needed G#, and I always have an A whistle to hand. Thirdly, I liked the flute so much in every other respect, and by the time it was delivered to me it seemed churlish to even bother.
I’m assuming that Pat O will contact me when he’s ready to start on mine to discuss things like key placement.
My Murray’s G# key is funny, too … it was designed for the wee people, I think. (Perhaps that’s one of the quirks of (reproductions of) older instruments … like low doorways in old houses? (i.e., people used to be smaller before things like vitamins, penicillin and indoor heating?))
I also have a McGee Pratten; its G-sharp key is the most sensible I’ve encountered though I haven’t gotten to spend nearly enough time with, say, an Olwell 
… FWIW, the G-sharp on my old Ormiston is small but well-placed (for me, at least) …
If you think you might have issues related to key placement, it would probably be a good idea for you to go ahead and mention them to Patrick now, rather than waiting for him to bring up the topic. I don’t recall him asking me anything about how I’d like the keys placed when he made the keyed pieces for my flute, and even if he had I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell him anything because my total experience up to that point was with keyless flutes. All I knew about keys at the time was that I wanted them! I suspect many of his keyed flute buyers fit that profile, which is probably why he never asked me for any specifics about key placement. But then again I got my keys in 1997, so maybe he’s changed the way he does things now.
There’s not a whole lot of leeway, though, when it comes to placement of the G# key, since the touches for the G# and the long F both need to be accessible to the same finger, the left hand pinky (or right hand pinky for left-handed players). Overoptimizing the location of the G# touch to make it perfect for a particular player is likely to result in a less than satisfactory location for the long F touch. Putting both of these keys on a flute is a compromise. Neither one will be ideally located, but on the other hand neither one should be adversely located, either. IMHO Patrick Olwell does a great job negotiating this compromise in his “standard” flute design. I’ve never had any problem with my flute. Now I do have fairly small hands - but I suppose that could be either an advantage or disadvantage in this situation. I don’t know…
I have seen some keyed flutes by other makers (can’t recall who, and even if I could there would be no point to naming them) that were downright ugly, with keys (particularly the longer ones like C and F) sticking way out from the flute. They kind of reminded me of a bent antenna on a car, they were that ugly. To give the benefit of the doubt, maybe those key placements were customizations to make the flute more playable for a specific person. But I do think that in addition to playing well a flute needs to look nice too. Patrick Olwell’s flutes look great and play great as well!
John,
Just out of curiosity, which of the two keys do you use more?
Eamonn Cotter’s flutes rock. I bought mine on the recommendation of Brendan McKinney who is one of the best Irish flute players I know, in the US or anywhere else. After playing the Cotter as my main flute for over three years I would strongly agree.
This stuff about his prices is nonsense - his prices are very reasonable whether you are in Europe or not. I currently have a 6-key E-flat flute on order with him and the price is $2300 USD. I payed about the same for my 6-key in D three years ago. His wait time is only about 6 months as well, which is also nice
Cathy: I think it was my flute your were talking about playing- we met at the St. Louis tionol (I liked your Murray too, btw) .
Anyway, I think Cotter flutes are among the best in the world and I would highly recommend them to anyone who is serious about playing traditional Irish music on the flute.
Cheers,
Matt Loranger
Chicago, USA
Hey, Matt! Good to “see” you again! … And yes indeed, yours is the Cotter that haunts my dreams. I feel so unfaithful to my beloved little banana flute! (Good thing it’s off repairland soon; I’ve been saving my pennies.)
Thanks for letting us know about the pricing, too – Cotters, like Murrays, seem to be among the “mystery flutes” around here, so I’m grateful for any information on them. (even if it does “feed the fire”, so to speak )
As much as it’s only supposed to be about the player, and a person should be happy with what they have, yada yada yada, there’s something about those great flutes that … well …
Ooops, there I go again! Anyway, hope all’s swell with you.
Best,
Cat, Your Cotter Coveter.
[quote=“I currently have a 6-key E-flat flute on order with him”.
Matt, I might just be as thick as a brick sandwich, but what possible use would any human being have for a 6 keyed Eb flute? Okay, so the accidentals on a D allow playing in Amaj and F, for example, but my tiny mind can scarcely contemplate the tune key possibilities of a fully keyed Eb!. Do you play a lot of of sessions where Eb flute, whistle, box, etc is the norm, and just play it like it’s a “normal” D session, or what?
m.d. (puzzled)
There are a lot of large embouchures giving their opinion here with regards
to Cotter flutes, you will hear all kinds of storys here about flute makers and how this maker is this and thiis other one is that etc,
There is one sure way to find out for yourself which makers flute is for you,
and that is to order a flute and play it and see if you like it, dont depend on what you hear from some other large embouchure, there are some great flute makers around today and Eamonn Cotter is one of those, all these makers have a trial period with their flutes and if the flute does’nt suit you you can return it and get refunded.
An 8-key Eb would be even cooler. Going down to D with the first foot key you would be able to play tunes in like D and G using every possible key on the flute 
Depends on your definition of the word “able.” 
“Large embouchures.” I like that. And since you’ve tossed in an opinion too, I guess that means … welcome to the Large Embouchure club, glinjack
“Hey, shut 'yer large embouchre there Cat!”
Heh heh, I like it.
Personally, I prefer the term “generous.” 
emdee:
Yes, I plan to use the E-flat just like a “normal” D flute except everything is a half-step higher. I like E-flat flutes - they’re fun - and I’m not inclined to ever purchase a flute that dosn’t have at least 6-keys. It’s too inconvenient to NOT have the keys there when I want them.
glinjack:
You are quite right. I normally don’t post on these forums because of all the “large embouchures” here. In this case, however, I wanted to weigh in because I really think Eamonn’s flutes are something special.
Matt Loranger
Chicago, USA
The long F. The fiddlers I play with tend to hang out in Dm a lot more than they do in A. Also, in my years as a keyless flute player I got fairly good at the half-hole G#, but could never get the half-hole F natural at all. So even though I have keys, a lot of times I still half-hole G# - especially in fast passages since half-holing is a one finger move while using the key takes two fingers (e.g. going from G# to A or vice versa). But I always use one of the keys for F natural.
But this is just me. As they say on the internet, YMMV.