I used to collect flutes. I have owned a lot of them. One maker of great repute got mad at me for selling flutes on eBay that I had bought from him, but I have friendships with a number of other flutemakers. I have not been a hell-raiser of ruffler of many feathers for years. I feel compelled now, though, to tell you about my experience in dealing with Sam Murray.
I have a blackwood Murray flute that I got from Patrick Jones. It was a lovely, easy transaction (as all have been with him) and it’s a great flute. It was the third Murray flute I had owned. I’d sold the others before I got this one. This one has textured silver rings. Patrick got it from Sam, and I got it, new, from Patrick.
I sold off a lot of flutes when we were raising money to buy our new house. I had only a couple of Irish flutes left. I started thinking about ordering a boxwood 8-keyed flute from Sam. I had read the other threads on this forum about Sam’s tendency to be a bad communicator, and about the delays, and the possibility of incorrect tuning. I decided to try it anyway.
I wrote to Sam on June 18th, 2008, to ask about an 8-key boxwood flute. I heard nothing back and wrote again on June 24th. On June 27th, he wrote back and told me the price and that there would be an 8-10 month wait. I wrote back immediately that I would like to go ahead. Each time I wrote to him (and this pattern never stopped), there was a delay before I heard back. Sometimes a 3-week delay. And sometimes he didn’t write back at all, and I would write again, and wait for a response. We worked things out this way, slowly. On August 9th, I heard from Sam that the bank transfer of the deposit had come through.
So, if the flute had been ready in the time frame he mentioned (from the time the deposit went through), it would have been finished sometime around April-June, 2009. Miraculously, I got a note from Sam in June of 2009 that he was working on the flute and it would be done in 2-3 weeks, so I should go ahead and transfer the rest of the money, which I did on June 16th, the morning after I received his note.
On July 9th, I received a note that Sam would like to call me to discuss something, and I replied with my phone number. In the response, I was told he’d call that Monday. There were a few promises of phone calls, and a suggestion on my part that we have this conversation in email, and Sam finally called me in early September. Yeah, that’s right.
He was very pleasant, and he explained that he had an unforseen problem with the wood, and that he had started to season new wood from the same log, for the pieces that hadn’t worked out. He wanted to make up for the delay, and he offered me two options. He said I could have a refund of 450 Euros, or he would decorate the flute to artistic, “exhibition standards.” I chose the second option. I remembered a beautiful Murray Boxwood flute I’d seen on this forum, nitric acid stained and with ivory rings, to make up for a long delay such as this one. I was excited about how my flute would look.
I wrote a few weeks later, pointing out that it had been three months since I had paid in full. A few days later, I got a note saying he would ship it that weekend. I received the flute a few weeks after that, on October 3rd.
Apart from being a different wood (boxwood instead of blackwood) and having keys, it is exactly the same as the standard one I got from Patrick Jones. It has the same textured rings. It has no staining, no ivory, no extra embellishment. The tone holes are not sanded AT ALL, and there are wood shavings around them. The embouchure also has some wood shavings in it. He has padded the keys with some kind of paper-like foam. It does not seal properly, and the resulting tone is less than thrilling. Fortunately, the flute is in perfect tune. I will need to send it to an American flutemaker/repairer to make it playable, as the pads are unacceptable and the holes need to be finished.
I wrote to Sam immediately, reminding him that he had offered me a choice: partial refund or significant embellishment, and I wanted to claim the partial refund, since he had not embellished the flute (and, furthermore, I will have to pay to have the flute made playable). He didn’t respond. I wrote again. And again. Finally, I wrote that I was very disappointed that he was not responding, and I couldn’t believe he would conduct business this way, and that if I didn’t hear from him, I would contact a flute friend of mine who lives in Ireland, to get him to help me get a response. Weeks later (yesterday, November 20), I got an unfriendly email from Sam, saying that the rings are textured, and that is embellishment, and I am welcome to return the flute for a refund. I will NOT do this, because I am fairly certain that I would not receive the refund and never hear from him again.
This will be a very nice flute after I have it properly padded, as Sam’s flute design is a great one. However, the process of dealing with him has been excruciating, and I think you all have a right to know about it.
that said there are 2 other ways to do this… have a tough guy you can hire in Galway to pick up your Flute, or for peace of mind just order an equally good flute from Terry McGee!
