I wonder, are people turned off when a maker doesn’t have a strong web presence? This is the wrong group to ask, I realize, but I suppose I’m a little curious.
There are many good makers who don’t have webpages, let alone email. Do you yourselves go to sessions or gatherings and find people (maybe non-Internet-interfaced people) have flutes made by makers you’ve never even heard of? Or is your experience that there’s still a high proportion of the usual suspects.
I’ve used the internet quite a bit to research things, of course, but I know I’ve made my “most important” flute decisions based on playing instruments myself. A luxury, I guess.
This is not meant to turn into a thread about mp3-flute-comparisons. Oh, heaven forfend.
As one who has been researching flutes recently, I didn’t talk to (or consider) anybody without email. OTOH, I did talk to a few people without web pages.
I really hate talking on the phone, but it’s been a pleasure talking to a few flute makers recently.
I think it’s crazy not to have a Web presence these days, but i bought my flute from Eamonn Cotter when he didn’t use email, and everything was done through phone and mail.
I think email is a nice thing, but nothing beats talking with someone personally or on the phone.
I was looking for a maker closer to home, in the UK or Europe. I found Dominic Allan through the flutemakers directory. I never heard of him, but I liked the photos of his flute on his website. After a few emails clarifying some details I phoned him, because I was seriously interested in his small-holed flute. It was important to talk things through personally and to establish a “working relationship”. I placed my order, and he sent me a flute on loan, with the option to cancel the order for a refund, if I found the flute not right for me. Trying the loan-flute was most important, and I could work out some small changes, which Dominic incorporated in the new flute. This was done mostly by email, but we went over all the details of the keywork once more before he started making them.
So web-presence, email, telephone contact and physical trial of the flute were all important to me. I think any buyer should insist from the maker to have at least a keyless flute sent on loan to try it out. If we all do it it will become common practise.
That’s a good question, Stuart.
I think that, for the most part, if the person is reknowned like Olwell, he doesn’t need a site, nor does a maker like Murray. The reason for this (besides a good flute) is a long-before-the-internet reputation among well-known players. Still, you’ll find more Hamiltons around than Cotters. A newer good maker – Byrne for eg, suffers without photos on the web and other bits of info gained by a description, sound bites, etc, but he has a good flute and his name gets around; probably gets more orders than he can handle. Staying in the US, Look at Copley’s surge on this list with his site, or Casey’s, as opposed to Byrne. Now, I’m not sure Byrne wants or need a sudden onslaught of orders, but that’s another topic. Still, I can think of a few makers that haver or had very attractive sites and are not as popular, and one or two that have stopped making flutes.
Overseas, either direction, with little chance of trying the lesser known maker in another country, we go primarily on reputation gained largely on the internet – local session folks usually play one or two makes we all recognize.
Still, I think that certain makers have very established reps, particularly for ITM, and the sites, or lack of one, themselves don’t do much to shake this. What the internet has done is allow the word of who these makers are and how to reach them, by phone or by web, and for folks like us to discuss them ad-nauseum so that even an inexperienced buyer has some idea who is good and who is somewhat chancier.
The websites works well, but particularly for people who don’t have themselves plugged into the grapevine, via the internet or locally. An example of the websites working well in spite of bad reputations is the Lark Pakistani flutes; their main audience is the newbie who sees an affordable flute that physically looks – even sounds, on a sound sample – like a real flute.
Gordon
Interesting perspectives. Bryan Byrne was exactly the kind of maker I was wondering about; you’ll recall that there used to be a link to a very short page on his work from Seth Gallagher’s site, but now I don’t imagine it’s there anymore (with Seth making his own flutes now).
The other thing I’ve found interesting about this forum is that it (and the woodenflute list) has/have engendered smaller, private discussions. Maybe because of how often I shoot off my mouth on here, I have gotten many private messages over the past couple of years asking about this- or that-flutemaker. And I’ve written a couple of such emails when I hear about someone new, and have gotten good information.
I’ve only bought one flute completely without trying one from the maker beforehand, and that was the Byrne. Oh, and a flute or two (well, actually three) that I ended up selling on my way to finding out about Olwell flutes.
First of all, well-known, established flute makers are obviously able to sell flutes without a web presence, so the “old” way of ordering flutes; trying one in a session or someplace, and subsequently contacting the maker works for some makers…
That being said, I think a web presence does make a difference for many potential buyers, and I imagine new makers can make things easier for themselves by having a nifty website; if the address is shown somewhere - this forum for instance - it acts as a free ad.
I also think having a website will attract many beginning flute players as customers, people who don’t have a clue what to buy in the first place (not meant as negative as it may sound, after all most people’s first flute purchase is probably made without much to go on). In their case, a website might give the feeling that they are making their decision a little less blindly, after all they have seen photos of the instrument, heard sound samples, etc. Not having to actually talk to the maker might also be seen as an advantage - a beginner might be afraid to reveal his ignorance of flute playing…
Well, if you have enough orders to keep you going a few years and a great reputation it hardly matters. If you aren’t getting enough orders it would be very foolish not to have a site.
The maker of my (high-end) concertina not ony doesn’t have a site, his phone number isn’t even listed. To contact him, you have to be an insider. Yeah, you guessed it. His waiting list is years long. No, he doesn’t need any new customers for repairs and servicing. But once I contacted him, he talked for hours about what I wanted and about concertinas in general, placed me on his list, invited me to drop by the workshop and within a couple of weeks located one of his old boxes for me secondhand so I could avoid the 3 or 4 year wait. Now, that’s service.
Obviously it helps to be a local; this couldn’t happen unless you were I think. Looking at flutes, I did find myself gravitating towards instruments that have up-to-date websites to some extent, if only because I had a more accurate idea about current prices, waiting periods and so on. With Olwell bamboos, there is so much attention paid to them here that the information is as good as you could get from a website. Recently a Cotter sold on eBay secondhand and I simply had no idea how the one bid made for it compared to current prices for new Cotters.
I think you’re right about the positive impact of the web on potential buyers. However, since there’s no squelch on the internet, I bet a lot of makers would spend an inordinate amount of time screening out the non-serious inquiries from serious ones. Imagine how much email folks like Pat Olwell would get, most of it probably from very demanding people wanting their bamboo flutes right now. Would we want to take him away from his flutemaking to answer messages in a timely fashion? Probably not. You could argue that talking on the phone takes longer than scribbling an email, though, I suppose.
I wonder how much time it takes for people with a big, fancy website both to keep the website up to date, and to deal with the interest it generates . . .
I do think that Brad Hurley’s flutemaker page, hotlink here, is perhaps one of the best resources for finding out how to contact a flutemaker. And that’s a web resource.
“I wonder, are people turned off when a maker doesn’t have a strong web presence? This is the wrong group to ask, I realize, but I suppose I’m a little curious.”
Definitely not a turn off - Sam Murray, Chris Wilkes, or pipemakers Dave Williams & Geoff Wooff don’t have web sites yet they have long waiting lists and solid reputations for making probably the best instruments of their kind amongst discerning musicians. Of course their instruments are often discussed on the web so there is a web presence of sorts. The same goes for Tom Aebi, no web site but a fine PDF catalogue can be obtained on request.
Being a techy by trade, the web is my knee-jerk reference for researching literally everything. Now, I take my findings with a large grain of salt as you can’t trust everything you read on the web ( ), however, if the topic in question is popular-enough one can begin to get a starting point for more valid research based on articles/discussions/arguments.
With how specialized the wood-flute community is (the irtrad community even moreso being a sub-class of the larger), one has to keep in mind the ‘folksy’ nature of people involved in it (i.e. potentialy adverse to latest technology)
Even though their websites are sorely out of date (which I only learned from direct contact with the makers via email) Michael Grinter and Chris Wilkes were the first two makers I considered seriously. However, in discovering those guys I was turned on to a number of other makers Olwell, Byrne, Aebi etc who are keeping long waiting lists with no formal web presence which got me thinking hmmmm…
And who do I end up actually ordering a flute from? A former apprentice (now maker) of another maker with viritually no web-prescence (but again, plenty of work) Rod Cameron. John Gallagher’s flutes are at comparatively very few sessions at this point as the other names mentioned above (heck, there aren’t even that many sessions in Seattle suitable for a beginner like me to try out lots of flutes), so I’m takin a huge leap of faith - or that’s what I thought until I shared some email and a couple of phone calls with the man. Now I have no reservations that I’ll be getting more instrument than I’ll likely ever need.
edit: P.S. to answer Stuart’s actual question , it was frustrating at first hearing about all these great makers who had no formal web presence, but after some careful and prolonged research it obviously wasn’t a make or break issue for me.
Forums like these add to all of these maker’s presence, good and bad. I heard of Byrne through Stuart, who (correct me if I’m wrong, Stuart), bought one on the advice of Brad. Still happened via the internet, even if Brian himself does not have (or want) a site. OTOH, I remember a few years back, when I was looking for a(nother) flute, I found a site that looked great. The flutes were low in price, and really attractive, physically. Not being the sort that cares what’s the most trendy to play, I thought I’d give this a go. Long story short, several people warned me, privately, against this maker’s flutes, and it was long after I owned a different, and quite successful, chosen flute, that I played one (or two, can’t remember) of these flutes. They, quite frankly, bit the big one. No tone, bad tuning. Good and timely advice from friends online. Later still, the man stopped making flutes altogether, good website notwithstanding.
The world, via the internet, is a much smaller place. Advice; sometimes good, sometimes not, comes to us from all over the globe in seconds. Want to know what a flute player in Switzerland’s flutes are like? Someone has probably played one. Vermont? Same deal. If a maker is good, word will spread globally, and if they’re bad, well..
That mistake has been made before - wrong Andrew I’m afraid!
To keep on topic - I am a complete web-head, nearly everything I buy, I buy online, but flutes are a different beast altogether. A flute is not just a consumer item, it’s got soul (pretty romantic for a Monday morning, dontcha think?)
I think you are doing yourself a disservice if you judge makers by their (lack of) web presence. Boards like this, on the other hand, seem to be where the real information is passed around. Often, however, and as has been discussed before, opinions stated publicly are a bit too nice and the real value comes from the off-list discussions that go around.
I would love all the makers to have great sites, with loads of pictures and information, but I still wouldn’t make a choice based on it!
I think it’s a cloning thing, frankly. Two Andrews, both friends of Chris Wilkes… Both have that wacky, British sense of humor… Pickering, in Old English, in fact, means “the other one”.
Don’t think Woodenflute’s Andrew Pickering is on C&F forums, though…
Gordon
), however, if the topic in question is popular-enough one can begin to get a starting point for more valid research based on articles/discussions/arguments.
, it was frustrating at first hearing about all these great makers who had no formal web presence, but after some careful and prolonged research it obviously wasn’t a make or break issue for me.
