M&E Rudall 6 key - initial impressions

Irish Flute
1

Received my M&E Rudall 6 key this morning! I can hardly contain myself, as I am at work and unable to play :frowning:… I have my flute sitting on my desk though, so I can look at it.

It is a beautiful instrument, and here is a preliminary review based on the time I spent opening it and playing this morning.

The flute has a beautiful voice, round and full of harmonics. I found the timbre rather easy to modify with breath pressure/embouchre shape. I noticed that it seems to be rather quiet, but I haven’t yet adapted my classically trained embouchre to this flute yet.

The keys all operate very smoothly, but require enough pressure so that I can rest my pinky on the Eb key while playing say, C# without depressing it.

The flute has a good “heft” and is quite balanced.

My few gripes:

  • Workmanship is a little rough. Nothing some 600 grit emery paper, some compressed air, and a cleaning cloth won’t cure, but unexpected to have to do this to an instrument I just paid over $700 for. Tone hole chimmneys rough in spots and sawdust/corkdust/etc deposited in various places. Obvious cutting marks on bottom tuning holes. Excessive tenon wax.

  • Case is handmade by Michael, and sufficient, but is already falling apart. Not really an issue, as I intend on making a tube case I can sling over my back, but if having a very high quality case is important, look for one elsewhere.

All in all, very happy with the sound of this flute, even after less than an hour of playing. I know I will grow to LOVE it, as I am impressed already. I do wish there was more attention to detail given the asking price. Workmanship is FAR better than I can do in my own garage though, so I guess I don’t have a lot of room to complain.

I will post a further review in while after playing it more.

|binary_sunset|

2

I have to ‘ditto’ pretty much everything you brought up, Binary. The rough bits seem for the most part to be cosmetic, but the tone and playability are great, and with the right touch to the embouchure, a surprising amt. of volume can be got. For what one has to pay for high-end instruments made of fine woods, I felt that the money spent was OK by me, though. I’ts a superb down ‘n’ dirty travel flute with a fine intonation. Hard to beat, but that’ll probably come with time as there are so many makers out there making yet further advances in their craft.

N

3

Yes, I can see what you mean now about a “surprising” amount of volume. I found out that keeping my lips “out of the hole” and focusing the air stream more, the flute really sang! Huge, huge tone.

This was exactly what I was hoping for, as I had been frustrated with my Boehm’s seemingly limited warmth and tonal palette. I talked with a guy recently who said something like “oh, we see more people going from simple-system to Boehm, it seems to work out better”… but I don’t think I will ever go back… at least not until I can afford a fancy-pants wooden headjoint.

Still my first day with it, and it has SO MUCH SOUND… feels like it makes its own reverb, if you know what I mean.

|binary_sunset|

4

gasp Going from simple system to Boehm? And the sky’s color on his planet would be…? :laughing:

Seriously, nothing against Boehm flutes. However, my observations in the trad population indicate the opposite, in fact. Hmmm…