I’ve just received my DJ Allan keyless blackwood Eb, no.0404.
The quality of workmanship is astonishing for a flute that costs just £400. Joints are seamless, fit and finish is impeccable. The brass rings (just as I wanted) are so highly burnished they reflect almost as silver in daylight, and it’s only in dim artificial light that a golden brassy sheen can be seen. The photos really don’t do the flute much justice, you can’t for example see the grain of the wood in these pictures.
Operating the tuning slide is like operating a pneumatic piston…very firm but incredibly smooth. Not a hint of metal-to-metal contact. And there was a ‘hidden’ surprise in the unlined headjoint too: two in fact, discovered only when I removed the crown for a peep at the cork. From the outside, it looks like the blackwood crown has a simple inlay of boxwood veneer. Not so. The crown is a thread-lapped boxwood plug set in a blackwood ring; as I said, fit and finish is impeccable.
But the stopper was a real surprise. I thought it was perhaps polypropylene, but it isn’t. Mr Allan tells me it’s artificial ivory. And as you can see in the photo, it’s cork-lapped for an airtight seal.
If I sound as though I love this flute it’s probably because I do. It’s a work of art. When I peered down the bore after playing it and swabbing it out, I was taken back to my old shotgunning days… looking down the bore of the flute was like looking down a freshly cleaned 12-bore barrel.
Mr Allan tells me I should limit my playing to up to an hour a day for the first couple of months. Well, I’m erring on the side of caution and taking it a lot slower than that while I’m breaking it in. I don’t want anything nasty to happen to this flute!
I’m not a good enough player to be able to make qualified statements about the flute’s tone and responsiveness. I can say that Mr Korg tells me that tuning is spot on with the slide out about 4mm and my ears tell me that intonation is likewise through both octaves. The flute to me sounds wonderfully bright, and louder than my Bleazey D. The Allan’s embouchure is eliptical, but I found to my delight that I didn’t have to make a significant adjustment to my embouchure when I switched from the Allan Eb to the Bleazey D after my self-imposed breaking-in time expired. I reckon I’m going to enjoy this flute (as well as the Bleazey) for many years (touch wood!).
I’ve shrunk the pictures above to fit on the page better here, but you can see bigger pics by clicking on the thumbnails at: