I recently acquired this flute for very little money.
It is stamped “August Damm” “Edward Wurlitzer” “Boston Massachusetts” “60”
I play the flute a little and have a very good keyless flute to learn on. This one is more to see how keys work. It’s the same length as my D flute, so I assume it’s D.
The flute has two cracks in the fully-lined head joint. The slide is fine. It has 9 keys. The two on the bottom (foot) are broken. I gather it’s a German type flute although made in the US. It’s hard to get a sound right now. It needs a complete cleaning, springs and pads, recorked tenons etc. I understand tuning is a whole other problem.
I can afford to put a few hundred bucks in it if I stood a chance of getting a playable instrument. On the other hand, I could just hang it on the wall.
Any thoughts.
And is this one of the infamous Sears flutes? I’ve googled these two guys and the only flute to which I could find a reference is a 13-key in a Virginia Museum collection.
Hi,
The flute is probably a German import for Edward Wurlitzer. I don’t think it is a Sears and Roebucks flute. It could be a decent playing flute, hard to say, it is hit and miss with these flutes.
Good luck!
Jon
Re-padding and re-lapping tenons, whether in cork or thread, are not difficult, expensive or risky to the instrument - worst case if you mess up is having to pay a woodwind repairer to re-do it. Cleaning is also not a problem. You could do the whole job yourself for less than £15/U$30, I’d say, and learn some useful skills into the bargain. You would then have a flute functioning sufficiently well to determine its pitch, intonation and playing character, by which criteria to then decide whether to spend any more on getting the cracks and broken keys fixed, which are less readily DIY-able and more expensive to pay for. Just a clean and re-pad/lapping would cost way more from a repairer and might prove a waste - plus most normal modern instrument woodwind repairers in mainstream music shops are out of their depth with these antiques and won’t necessarily do an appropriate job.
There are various online guides here on C&F in old threads and on various flute makers’ and other special interest websites to help you with cleaning, re-padding and re-lapping, and we can advise you how/where to find those and get materials, and with any problems arising as you tackle it, here on C&F too. Quite a few of us have done this kind of thing.
I wouldn’t advise leaping in the deep end with the cracks and keys yourself unless you are a very confident handyman, and if the flute turns out to be a dud player, it wouldn’t be worth the effort even DIY. But it is worth getting any flute up to reasonable playability for testing if it can be done cheaply and easily - you never know, it might be a good one! Some of these German style ones are very decent, though many are rubbish - you just need to find out!
