Been away from the forum and put down my flute playing for a break. Now that I’m back, I seem to have lost all of the low Ds in a number of these keyed simple system flutes.
I had a reputable flute repairer fix up one of them which had developed a crack. Another one, had suspect pads with a leak at the low D. Over the past few months, they’ve been in and out of repair cycles, the longest of which has been away for 6 months for a split fix. I tried swapping some of the old dried out pads for newer ones, but the sizes seem to be more akin to the old leather purse style pads, rather than the modern flat pads. The Pratten sounds great for the left hand, and clearly has lost it on the right hand keys. The nameless ones seem to be smooth and weak only below the low E, and the other Thibouville type is just a mess.
Bottom line is, I have no bottom D on most of four of these simple system keyed flutes and the only flute which I have which works with no issue (cringe) is my Boehm flute. I guess the Siccama keyed type flute is out of fashion although I rather like it.
I did contact a few makers about keying a simple system flute, although they all failed to reply to emails after initially sounding promising.
Does anyone know anyone who specialises in repadding these in the UK? It probably isn’t economically feasible to send for a complete overhaul although they all played solidly (at one point in their life) and as recently as last year.
Any thoughts or helpful suggestions welcome.
