Disappointment, aah shucks

Irish Flute
1

My Bb Tipple flute arrived this morning. Beautiful craftsmanship, lovely tone (as much as I was able to determine), but alas, I discovered that I was unable to manage the inline hole stretch! Doug does warn people about this and recommends the off-set holes, but having fairly big hands, and playing Pratten holed flutes and low whistles, I decided to opt for the inline arrangement. Big mistake, especially on this flute. I have contacted Doug and he has agreed to swap it for an inline model. God Bless him for that. Anyone else gone through this? Oh, apparently the conical bore large flutes are not quite as big a stretch
( I had mention that I had played a Burns Bb and had no problem with the stretch) but I don’t fully understand the reason for this.

Arbo

2

What you say about the Burns Bb makes sense. Casey makes some (all?) of his flutes to be “ergonomic.” The one I have is incredibly easy to finger compared to others.

3

It is interesting that with the inline hole arrangement Arbo is able to cover the R6 hole but not the L3 hole, since he uses conventional grip with the left hand and piper’s grip with the right hand, whereas the most common problem is being able to cover R6. I think that he would be able to play my low Bb with an offset hole for L3. I encourage prospective buyers to layout the position of the finger holes on a piece of pipe so that they can get the feel of what the finger stretches will be like on a large flute.

Arbo asked me if the low B flute would offer some improvement in terms of finger stretches. The following is a table of the finger hole sizes (dia. in mm) and distance between finger holes (center to center in mm)

Large bore (20 mm bore diameter) three-piece flutes:
Low Bb: emb --(9)–49–(9)–43–(8) joint (9)–33–(11)–60–(8)
Low B: emb —(9)–48–(9)–40–(8) joint (9)–30–(11)–56–(8)
Low C: emb —(9)–42–(9)–39–(8) joint (9)–29–(11)–52–(8)
Low Db: emb --(9)–40–(9)–38–(8) joint (9)–28–(11)–48–(8)
Low D: emb —(9)–37–(9)–37–(8) joint (9)–28–(11)–43–(8)

edit: Thanks Jem. It makes more sense without the smileys.

4

Doug, you need to “disable smileys” in the options below the typing box on the posting page - you can go back and do it if you edit your post.

5

One benefit of the tapered bore is that the holes can be closer together. Also, Casey’s design has very small L3 and R3 holes, which moves them up even further.

6

All is well. I am actually getting a B flute with the offset holes which should remedy the reach problem. As an added benefit I may finally get around to playing some of those ‘E’ tunes!
Arbo