A quick description
Grinter made only a few flutes in cocuswood, and that’s one of it. It was part of a lot of 2 flutes, originally made for mr. Kevin Crawford. 8 keyed, lined keyways, new pads, excellent tone, the flute is back in my hand after mr. Grinter gave it a full review.
It’s Grinter original flute design, not the new one. I don’t know how old the flute is, since I bought the flute used, but I think about 6 years.
Why do I sell it
basically because I can’t afford having two D flute: it was a tough decision between mine and this one, but at the end (after almost an year of thinking!) I decided to keep mine .
Please contact me for any further information. The flute is in Italy but of course I’ll send it anywhere.
I felt like buying, but I wonder why Kevin Crawford didn’t want to keep such a beautiful flute like this for himself while he chose another Grinter …
Do you know the reason?
What about the volume as it is said that Grinter’s new model is much louder than older model?
I owned a blackwood 8-keyed Grinter, bought from a board
member, sold to another board member. It was the old
model. Michael G described these flutes on his site
as ‘powerful,’ and that’s spot on. Volume was never
a problem and I could be heard in venues where
only my Olwell Pratten got through before.
What the newer, louder flute is like I can only imagine,
but I can’t see why somebody would wish to
increase the volume of the old flute.
I sold it for several reasons: I soon realized that I simply
don’t need 8 keys. Also the flute is on the heavy side,
and I was at the time injured in a way I thought was
related to flute-weight (mistakenly, it turns out).
Finally the tone was lovely and responsive, but I felt
I was playing a classical instrument. I couldn’t get
a dirty sound. Of course I didn’t try terribly long,
because as mentioned I was injured.
Meanwhile at the St. Louis Tional I asked Mike Rafferty,
who was playing a keyless Olwell Pratten, if Prattens
were his favored flutes. He said, well, the Grinter 8 key
is excellent for his style of playing, he’d played one
and it was terrific! So obviously it’s possible to
make these sound the way I couldn’t, not in the
time frame that I tried.
In this older thread, it is said that Michael McGoldrick wanted the Grinter louder. Also, it is said that the Grinter himself designed the new flute so that it would play more powerful and louder.
Yes, I’d read that. ONe of the reasons I was baffled.
The old Grinter is louder than a Byrne, louder than
a Seth Gallagher Pratten, and it has considerable volume
at the bottom of the first octave. I play in an acoustic
jam with sometimes 20 people in a circle, banjos,
harmonicas, mandolins, fiddles. The Olwell Pratten and
the Grinter 8-key were the only flutes that
could be heard through all that throughout
their entire range. Doubtless the new Grinter
is louder still, but frankly I was impressed
by the flute’s power.
Correction: The Olwell Pratten and the Grinter 8-key were the only flutes that could be heard by you, the player, through all that. I guarantee you that the others in your circle and any listeners outside the circle heard no difference in your sound from one flute to the next. You were able somehow to adjust what you were doing with the Olwell Pratten and the Grinter 8-key in order to hear yourself better with those two flutes than you could with the others. Probably you were overblowing. Some flutes, such as Olwells, do respond well to overblowing, while others (usually smaller-holed flutes) will shut down entirely if they are overblown. But that doesn’t mean that the flutes that can be overblown are louder flutes than the ones that can’t. In the right hands (or, more precisely, on the right lips) those other flutes could have been played every bit as loudly (to your perception as the player) as the ones that responded to your overblowing. But it would have taken some time and work to get yourself to the point where you could play those other flutes loudly, and for whatever reason you didn’t do that. You went for the quick fix and chose the flute that responded to your overblowing. Nothing wrong with that. But don’t slag the Bryan Byrne or Seth Gallagher flutes on that account. They are every bit as good as the flute you chose, but just not for you, because you prefer to overblow.
John is absolutely correct, as usual. Here’s something I wrote last year.
The nicest thing happened last Saturday. I played in the afternoon at an art opening with John Hogan, a very nice bodhranista and singer and all-round character, and another guy, also John, a loud banjo player and guitar player. Knowing beforehand that the hall was echo-ey and that we’d be unamplified, I opted to take my Olwell Pratten because of its greater volume.
The art school gig went off ok. I could hear myself with no problem and somebody at the other end of the hall said they could hear me fine. After we all had dinner at the Hogans’ I went to play at Hyland’s Hotel. There were four flutes including mine, two concertinas, a fiddle, and a very good guitar/banjo player.
As I was cleaning the flute and getting ready to go home I realized that I had mixed my flutes up and had brought my Olwell Nicholson instead of the Pratten. I’d wanted to take the Pratten for the unamplified gig and for the large sessions in the evening. But I had played happily on the “smaller” Nicholson all day before realizing that it wasn’t the flute I’d intended on bringing.
On the way out I was stopped by a Scottish guy at the bar who was in the company of this absolutely terrific woman box-player. Two of The Heavies. He said, “that’s a great flute you have there.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“What kind is it?”
“An Olwell.”
“Of all the flutes in the session that was the one that we could always hear,” he said. “There’s a great flutey sound to it. I appreciate that because I play the flute too.”
“Thanks,” I said, “Patrick will be happy to hear it.”
As far as the audience is concerned, projection is far more important than player-perceived volume.
No, John, I had friends stationed throughout the room to report to
me the acoustics of the flutes in question. They reported what I heard: the Byrne and the Gallagher were fine in the second octave
but faded to inaudibility as they descended.
The Grinter was easily heard throughout its entire range.
I’m not, by the way, at all slagging the Byrne or the Gallagher,
the former being an amazingly good flute, IMO, which I’ve played
constantly for several years. (I’m not yet sure what I think
of the Gallagher, except that it isn’t bad.) I’m sympathetic to the
idea that a better flautist than myself might well have made
both of these flutes heard quite nicely in that venue.
It was, as I mentioned earlier, one in which it is uncommonly
hard to be heard.
I had just received the Grinter. I was impressed by
the fact that, out of the box, as it were, it was a good deal
more audible
than flutes I’d played the hell out of for years, including another
(very good) Rudall and a Pratten.
This goes to the conclusion that the
old Grinter isn’t lacking in volume; to the contrary, it’s
a powerful instrument.
I bought the Jim’s Grinter. One day I was playing at a large session, and my impression as a player was that the flute wasn’t particularly loud, and certainly I had trouble hearing myself. A visiting flute player came in and joined the session. Afterwards he asked me what I was playing. I said it was the Grinter. He said that it was amazing, he could hear it right across the room, and it just cut through the fiddles, banjos and box, and that he’d never heard a wooden flute do that. It turned out that he played wooden flutes for fun, but was his day job was as first chair flute in good regional symphony. Anyhow, FWIW, an original model Grinter in my not particularly skilled hands did have projection. So I while I recognize that there could be variations among different flutes, I agree with Jim. That flute was a session cannon.
Apart from the track listing acknowledgements on various recordings, it was because of the projection that I noticed the Grinter R&Rs too, it was one day sitting a long way across the room from Rachel Howitt’s Grinter at a session in Leeds. I remember being surprised how much I could hear of both the clarity and the complexity/warmth of tone coming through the mix of instruments right down to the low D and went over to ask what kind of flute it was. Not because of volume but definition/projection across the range.
I’m guessing, as the original advert said, because he had both the matching ones to begin with? Why this one and not the other one of the pair? It’s a fair question. I did ask him if he remembered it (and I hope he won’t mind me quoting a bit out of that context).
As other people pointed out above, several Grinter players switched from the ‘old’ model to the ‘new’ model, although I believe Mike Grinter recently made another ‘old’ style one for Kevin similar to this flute (but in blackwood). I guess it depends what you’re used to. Horses for courses. Catherine McEvoy also had a cocus Grinter for a while but (if I’ve understood her explanation correctly) sold it because she was having slight difficulty/stiffness adapting to a marginal difference in finger placement compared to her old R&R.
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