I’m looking for a blackwood flute in the key of F suitable for playing Irish tunes. Please reply offlist: <sgrahn@cmc.net>
Have you considered an Olwell bamboo in F? They are quite astounding.
Skip Healy also makes F flutes and has, as I understand it, a very short wait.
Cheers,
Doc
I secound the Olwell. God what an incredable animal. Talk about bang for your buck.
Tom
If you want an Olwell bamboo, you’ll have to wait till April. I wanted a D and an F and missed the cut off this time around.
My round marsupial friend,
You may want to check out Steve Cox’s work at Tallgrass Winds (www.tallgrasswinds.com , I think). I have an F flute from him, and it’s very nice, both in looks and sound. Very rich, capable of good volume, in tune both internally and externally, and flexible in tone. Very nice handmade hemp bag, too. Sounds much better than instruments for which I’ve payed much more money; I like it more than the three-piece Dixon polymer I bought to learn on before I got my McGee blackwood. And a couple local flutists have given it a go, and all liked it very much – one guy said it was as good as, but slightly different from, his Olwell bamboo F, but I don’t remember now what he felt was different, sorry to say.
That said, I’m eagerly awaiting a bamboo Olwell in Eb – ordered it back in August, so it should be here anytime now, per Patrick. I’m interested to see how it compares; I expect it’ll be a fine instrument, in any case.
Thanks very much for the tip Herb. I’ve just visited the website and it looks as though I can quite happily indulge myself a little here and still have keys left over to justify an Olwell or two when he’s taking orders again.
As you know, I’m very much the new kid on the block when it comes to flutes and I still have an embouchure about as firm as an overipe banana but I’m already getting the habit. What’s the term here: FLOA? As in, ‘Resistence is futile, just go with the FLOA.’ It’s worrying. Not only am I hearing an insistent voice saying ‘bamboo, time for bamboo’, it’s also saying ‘get wood, wouldn’t a Burns or Copley be nice’ and sometimes even ‘keys, why don’t you get down and chromatic?’ It’s a worry. But it does keep me away from accordeons.
That’s the entire reason for our enterprise, here. Get 'em hooked on flutes so there’s just no time left for accordions. Concertinas are okay, though.
With your dedication to music, you should be tooting away with some facility in a short time. The embouchure takes a while to settle in, and will probably change a time or two as you learn the instrument. My tone has gone from good to bad more than once, while adjusting something in the embouchure, but the recovery period is shorter each time. Ergonomics might be an issue as well; I suffered from pain in my left hand that was pretty unpleasant, but I worked on it and now am fine (though my left-hand rolls are still not as clean as they ought to be).
Wollongong isn’t too far from Canberra, is it? Maybe Terry McGee will let you try some of his models sometime, so you can get a feel for the different instruments before succumbing to full-fledged FlOA. Then there’s Grinter’s lovely Ruddals, and Noy’s pretty inlaid embouchure, and Olwell’s great sound, and Hammy’s manly sticks. . .
If they pay professors in Australia as they do here in the states, you’re in for a lifetime of consumer debt. . .
My F-ing flute is in the key of D. 
Hey, that’s a thought. My favourite luthier, Graham McDonald lives and works in Canberra and it’s only about a 2-3 hour drive away—that’s nothing in a country the size of Australia. (Graham built me a wonderful bouzouki recently.) I might well have bought Eld’s Grinter recently if it had been offered just a bit later than it was. He actually offered it to me but I was thinking B/C button box at the time. Oh well, time to work on my embouchure and practice concertina.