All,
I’m up too late and reading more than I can absorb, but I have a question. What is a lip plate do? Does it make it easier to play? I’ve even noticed that some wood flutes have them, so I’m curious.
Thanks,
Tony
Hi,
The lip plate on a boehm flute (silver flute) is nessasary to increases the thickness of the blow hole, as the metal is thin. This is where the sound wave is started, so is important for tone generation. On the wooden flute, it is often used for those poor souls that are allergic to the wood that there prized flute is made of. (Lipps blow up like balloons) 
Jon
Lip plates are usually one of the methods of increasing the embouchure chimney depth while decreasing the bore width. All baroque and most 19C traversos were built with a cylindrical head and the embouchure hole simply cut. Basically a cylindrical barrell, sealed in one end and with a hole in it. Apparently, some craftsmen of the trade are convinced that this is not the optimum. Boehm flutes has lipplates so that the metall (or wood) can be made thin, which helps the air vibrations, but the embouchure very deap, which also helps the sound. It would be no problem to make a cylindrical, old style metall head for boehm flutes, but most people would probably not like the sound that it would produce. If you look at the stability, sweetness, range and projection of a Boehm flute with this lip plate configuration compared to the old style head, the Boehm is much better. Therefor better suited to play orchestral music in big ensembles (then ofcourse there is this “easier chromatic” question, but thats another thread). Which is why some people have incorporated the modern parabolical (or whatever you would want to call it) head to simple system wood flutes. Terry McGee is one of those guys. This apperantly makes the flutes purer, sweeter, more projective, with better stability and range and so on. With a more classical sound, which in my ears is too pure for folk music. As I am mainly a folk music player, I much prefer the old head.
Then ofcourse there is this wood allergy, flat silver lipplates. They do little to the sound. Some people claiming, they make it more ringing and harder and less woody (pretty logicall), but I doubt there is a noteable differance. They are there purely to avoid lip to wood contact, and in some cases also to prevent cracks in the wood.
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Great Question
Great Responses
Thank you.
Actually it is also fairly common to find lip plates that cover only the player side of the embouchure hole, leaving the edge which interacts with the player’s air jet unaltered.