I’m trying to figure out how much plasma I’d have to sell to cover this: 
Plasma won’t do it…think organs my friend - if you still have 2 good kidneys, you should be good to go.
You can buy an Olwell six-key cocus for a lot less… though Chris Abell’s flutes are gorgeous.
Purtiest damn typewriter I ever did see…
A-442 
Is that typical of a boehm style flute?
2 cents sharp is hardley audable; if anything it will make the instrument sound ‘brighter’ rather then out of tune.
It seems to be fashionable these days.
It has seemingly become quite common these days - the old pitch creep is back, led by America this time! Thing is, so far as I know only flutes are doing it- and it is not clear to me whether they have re-scaled the flutes to a complete 12TET A=442 scale or just cut the head shorter on a 440 scale. Anyone know?
Actually the flute is tuned to A442 this is the flute pitch since 1982, makes them a little brighter, and seem to help with the projection.
I prefer the A440 flutes myself, or a newer one with a different head joint to get that deep, dark tone like the old pitched flutes.
Cheers,
Steve
I thought the A=442 means the flute with the headjoint pushed all the way in plays a little sharp, but pulling out the headjoint a little, where a put and most other players put theirs, makes it A440. Gives the player a little leeway to play a little sharper if needed. I’ve also heard that some orchestras play at A442 and maybe that’s why flutes are tuned to that frequency or have the capability of playing there.
So, if “some orchestras” are tuning to 442… a couple of Hz is no trouble for strings, but it means a complete new/spare set of woodwind and probably brass instruments, not to mention tunes percussion. Are they building 442 glocks, xylos, sets of tubular bells, etc? Are they tuning pianos to 442 (not so big a problem), not to mention celestes, glass harmonicas (the proper ones with spinning glass discs/bowls, not the party trick with glasses…) etc?
Would flutes go it alone in this and leave the oboes and clarinets on 440, or do they too have to have multiple instruments? I bet bassoonists don’t want to know!
Back to the bad old days of variable pitch standards according to where you are, and a general upwards creep, like I said!
On the other hand, if it is just the flutes being sharp to “brighten” them and “increase penetration”, we’ve been there before too! And it is back to flutes being always out of tune!
Deja vu - or at least, entendu!
Akiba, Bohm flutes usually have a very small amount of sharpening capacity anyway - they are not built to be at their specified pitch with the head rammed right home. Given how pernickety the Bohm flute world has become about “perfect tuning”, playing a flute with a 442 scaling with the head pulled out to 440 or a 440 scale with the head pushed in to 442 ought to be utterly unacceptable (and painful) to them! What would be the point in all that fuss about gradations in the scale tuning most folk just can’t hear?
The great thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
My rank amateur opinion, I had two Bb fifes. One was large bore and the other was wide, both play A440. The smaller bore had less of the lower harmonics, I believe. It sounds “brighter” instead of “rich”. Is there not other ways to make something sound “bright”? Embouchure size?, holes? 7.85 cents is nothing to me, but I am a hack and think that the flexibility of most any fife, not to mention something that has a tuning slide, should be easily compensated. Again a hack, but how out of tune will the scale be with a 7.85 cent difference if you adjust it by 7.85 cents?
As a flute player, it is not an issue, Other instruments seem to have much more fixed tuning.
Edited for proper cents.
Hi Jem,
Not professing to be the expert, just putting out ideas and hoping to hear from someone who is an expert (perhaps MT Guru).
I’ve also heard that clarinetists need to mold their tunings in order to play well and blend in better with strings. Flutes being at 442 may have a pleasing and more satisfactory effect than at 440. So let’s not bemoan tuning or this or that until we know the facts. Flutes seem beautifully in tune in all the orchestras I’ve heard today–they must be doing something right.
It’s actually 442Hz vs 440Hz, which is a 2Hz difference, not a 2 cents difference. 442Hz vs 440Hz is 7.85 cents, which is still pretty small change. It amounts to about 2mm movement of the slide, which is insignificant compared say to the effects of warming, or the difference between players.
I don’t know if any makers actually make differently scaled bodies for 440 or 442Hz models - I can’t imagine it. You’d need to get the scaling very accurate before you’d notice the difference!
Sooner or later someone will start to promote their range of flutes “in the new 442.4Hz standard”.
I wonder if the Valgon Rings people offer different models for 440Hz and 442Hz? I’m thinking of offering blackwood ones for ITM. And models for the tenor banjo, bouzouki and bodhran.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/harold.gomez/flute.html
Terry
Not here, too! 
In the brass world you can buy heavyweight valve caps, tuba mouthpieces with exteriors the size of Red Bull cans, and trumpets that weigh close to 5KG. There was a fad in the tuba world about 15 years ago where folk were putting a leather belt (or belts) around their bells to damp vibration. It’s way too easy to spend big bucks and end up sounding like yourself, just with a funny looking instrument.
I don’t have a clue what pitch the oboist is playing when we tune the orchestra. I just push or pull the slide a bit and get on with it. As to Jem’s comments, I tend to think the strings in an orchestra will push the pitch up a bit when left to their own devices. This doesn’t happen so much in ITM because the fiddlers play open strings and stay in first position. Orchestral string players almost never play notes on open strings in order to keep the color of the notes more uniform and often stay well up the neck.
Fortunately, most composers don’t leave the strings to their own devices for very long. When the winds or the bells come in, the strings will adjust if necessary. There have been a few times, though, when I’ve finished a piece with the tuning slide in a fair bit more than when I started it. I’m not sure how the flutes and clarinets handled those. All in all everyone is usually quite good at finding the most significant line or the lowest voice on the root of the chord and tuning accordingly as the piece progresses.
We seem to be taught right from when we start learning that erring a bit on the high side of the pitch is a lesser sin than erring on the low side. I read about the Vienna Philharmonic tuning up a few hertz to add a certain “sheen” to their sound. I can’t recall hearing about any orchestra tuning to A=437 to add “warmth.” Maybe we have a psycho-acoustician on the board who can tell me the whys of this.
One final thing on tuning. John Mack was the principal oboist of the Cleveland Orchestra for many years and a player of astounding musicality and virtuosity. He said that the tuning A was the scariest and most exposed oboe solo there was. He claimed he would start the A very softly during the applause for the concertmaster to guarantee he didn’t muff the attack. It’s a bit of a comfort to know that even the most accomplished players don’t always find it easy. 
Valgon Rings, wow, are they compatible with the resonance cause by my pyramid hat?
So really, would 7.85 cents make a flute that more "bright"?
Are there properties that can be altered that would give it
that sound without altering the pitch?I’m no expert on this either, Akiba, just my own experience in bands and orchestras. As Terry says, the difference 440/442 is < 8 cents. And this is within normal tuning range of the woodwinds or brasswinds I’ve played or encountered, which are at A440 when the tuning mechanism is somewhere between the maximal and minimal positions, typically pulled out a bit.
I’d guess a “442 flute” to be more a matter of testing and setup than a practical issue. That is, maybe it’s bench tested at that pitch for QC, and marketed as 442 = brighter, but perfectly capable of playing in tune at 440. Just a guess.
There’s also the psychoacoustic effect that higher pitches tend to be perceived as relatively flat compared to lower voices. For example, this is one of the reasons for “octave stretching” in piano tuning (in addition to string inharmonicity). So officially pitching an orchestral flute slightly sharp relative to the orchestra might make sense from that POV. I don’t know.
I understand that the Rings of Valgon are lovely to look at when viewed through a high-powered telescope. Unlike the Rings of Sauron. 
Where did Val go?
Hopefully they sound better than Vogon poetry.
Why do they remind me of an exhaust pipe add on?