I just picked up a maple sweetheart D flute.
Maple sounds very good indeed in these flutes
and I wonder if anybody has explored
making highend flutes out of maple,
by which I mean, with a tuning slide, etc.
I know it’s used in some excellent
guitars (back and sides).
Why not maple? Instead of mopane.
As a competitor to blackwood, etc.
I dunno; it seems a porous and wimpy wood to me. But i do have a Sweetheart D piccolo in maple, and it’s not a bad flute.
The wood that i really like is olivewood. They make recorders out of it, and they look (and smell) great. I’d love to see an olivewood flute.
g
I played in a pipe band in which we used maple chanters and they sounded great-- big, bright sound. The blond color would make a nice looking flute.
Maybe a woodturner would know more if there are difficulties in turning maple or if there are inherent weaknesses.
Tonally those chanters held their own for over 20 years with only minor carving and tweaking (something we often to GHB chanters).
Cheers,
Aaron
Ralph gives his maple instruments (and perhaps other woods, too) a bath in Tung oil which seals the wood. I wonder if that seal stays with age or not?
Eric
It’s permanent. He uses high temperature and pressure to force the oil into the wood. Then the oil dries in place and stays there. This is a technique used often with recorders made of lighter wood. It probably doesn’t work at all with denser woods such as blackwood (you wouldn’t be able to force enough (or any) oil in).
Eldred Spell is a high-end piccolo headjoint maker who uses the same process on “mountain mahogamy” for his 'joints.
g
The wood that i really like is olivewood. They make recorders out of it, and they look (and smell) great. I’d love to see an olivewood flute.
Check out http://kendaco.telebyte.com/cburns/Hutchins.jpg this is from Case Burns website http://kendaco.telebyte.com/cburns/flutecat.html .
That is indeed one beautiful looking flute.
I can almost smell it.
Colin
Yum! He seems to have stained it, so it looks even prettier.
g
Maple is used for recorder fairly often, as well as sycamore, which I’ve heard described as similar characteristics. The maple recorder (Moeck, oops, maybe it’s sycamore) I have does have some sort of wax-pressure treatment that’s supposed to seal it very effectively.
I make (or am making to make) flutes from maple that has been stabilized by an acrylic resin. This probably does the same thing as the wax or oil impregnation. It yields a dimensionally stable instrument but I can only assume that it changes the tone/timbre from what a ‘pure’ hunk of maple would sound like. That’s not necessarily bad as it yields a nice round tone.
I use curly maple and it adds some really neat figure to a round flute. I think that it’s a beautiful material to work with.
Erik
I have a maple Baroque flute by Sweet which I enjoy playing from time to time, although it’s not a session flute.
That said, I would think maple would be too soft to make a keyed flute from. The blocks on the one key on the Baroque show significant wear even though this flute has only been played occasionally.
Best,
–James
My untutored and subjective impression
is that maple is very hard, very sturdy, and not
pourous. Maybe the problem on
the block of the baroque flute,
and it’s shortcoming as a session
flute, flow from a cause other
than that the flute is maple?
My first experience with it
was guitars. It’s used
on big Gibson (and Taylor) jumbo
guitars, of the sort Rev. Gary Davis
played. Blues and gospel. Its lends a big
sound to these guitars. Back and sides.
I think that’s partly because of its
hardness.
I’ve played flutes and recorders made
of maple. They seem to have considerable
volume and clarity–the sweetheart maple
D has an impressive sound. My experience
is that maple recorders are tough and durable,
I actually got a used Moeck in Katmandu,
bummed around India with it, and kept it
for another fifteen years
under bad conditions (including a stint
in Thailand) before I somehow lost it.
It was never the worse for wear and gee
it sounded good.
Well, one wonders what happens if
a good flute maker makes a flute
of maple, with a tuning slide, cork
tenons, etc. It would probably soundbetter than the Sweetheart I have,
which would make it very good
indeed.
I guess we need to hear from somebody
who makes wood flutes, as mentioned
earlier in this thread, but the idea is tantalizing that
maybe here is an inexpensive environmentally
safe wood that is superiour for flutes, competing
with more expensive and less available
wood. Maybe it’s a matter of
tradition that we haven’t used it? Best
Would the drool dripping from the end of a maple flute be more syrupy?
Just curious.
Cheers,
Aaron
Maple is a softer wood and pretty much needs to be impregnated with waxes and oils in order to behave like an exotic hardwood. It works better on guitars without this because there is no moisture involved. Moeck impregnates its maple and sycamore (they’re related species, I believe) recorders with wax and it works fairly well, but keep in mind these are lower-priced instruments. Recorders, like flutes, use blackwood and boxwood, etc., on their upper instruments for all the reasons we already know.
Gordon
You did remind me of something, though.
When I play the maple Baroque flute, very little condensate forms in the bore, whereas on my other flutes I usually have water dripping out of the end after having played an hour or so.
I think this is perhaps because I don’t use as much air, or driven as hard, as when I play my other flutes, but I also wonder if the maple absorbs much more water than does blackwood. (Polymer and silver, of course, don’t absorb at all.)
Actually, I think I like the maple syrup idea best of all! 
–James
When I play the maple Baroque flute, very little condensate forms in the bore, whereas on my other flutes I usually have water dripping out of the end after having played an hour or so.
I think this is perhaps because I don’t use as much air, or driven as hard, as when I play my other flutes, but I also wonder if the maple absorbs much more water than does blackwood. (Polymer and silver, of course, don’t absorb at all.)
Actually, I think I like the maple syrup idea best of all!
–James[/quote]
Condensation in a bore has little to do with the “amount” of air you use to make sound. The lesser amount of air used to produce sound on a baroque is still quite enough to fill the smaller bore, which is enough to produce sound. That lesser amount of moist air has the same water molecules per square inch as when you blow into any flute, which means that, even though you blow less hard on a baroque, you will still produce the same amount of condensation. Spit, of course, is a different phenomena, and really shouldn’t occur in any great quantity in a flute, anyway. My plastic Aulos baroque drips far more than my blackwood Pratten, in spite of the amount of air the latter needs to play at full tilt.
Which is a long-winded (same moisture content) way of saying that your maple flute is, in fact, absorbing more moisture than your blackwood flute.
Gordon
I wonder if Sweetheart flutes in maple are
impregnated with wax?
If there is a process like that which leaves
you with a stable, relatively non-absorbent
good sounding, inexpensive flute, that
would be worth exploring, I think.
Played the Sweetheart last night at an acoustic
jam and it sounds very good for
a 250 dollar flute. It would be interesting
to hear a maple flute set up like
a celtic honker.
The lower end of Moeck recorders
tends to be occupied by maple;
nonetheless my own feeling is that
my Moeck maple had an
extraordinarily good sound.
I like the sound of maple, it seems.
After I lost the recorder I grieved for years,
until I took up whistles and
realized that playing recorder
leads to personal debasement
and hairy finger pads.
Thanks for the information, Gordon and everybody.
Jim, a maple impregnated with wax (or simply soaked/treated rigorously in linseed) can make a suitable flute, but it won’t replace the woods preferred. You might even like its sound, but, again, it won’t replace the woods used. It’s still a soft(er) wood, and it will still absorb more moisture and sound mellower than most Irish flutes would want.
I know of a baroque maker out in CA that shaves a few hundred off some of his flute models for ones made in curly maple – very attractive flutes, and he says his treatment (linseed soaking, reaming, more soaking, re-reaming, etc.) produces a flute very much like similar baroques in boxwood (also a mellower sound – he doesn’t recommend this for some of his models usually made of ebony, for eg.) But these are baroque flutes, and the qualities sought are very different from those sought on modern trad flutes.
Re your anti-recorder comment, be aware that your confessed taste for maple is a confessed taste for a decidedly mellower tone. Blackwood recorders are far less mellow. Perhaps you’ve missed your calling, and you should be playing recorder or something less strident than folk flute after all..
Hi Jim,
The impregnation that I spoke of earlier is one method. Here is one of the flutes that I made: http://www.tullberg.com/tully/forthcoming.html . This is the same material that I use for my whistle fipples and it is quite sturdy and moisture has VERY little effect on it. I’ve experimented by leaving it in water overnight and it shows very little swelling - I’ve even left whole whistles in water. I have yet to have any cracks develop in any of the tubes that I’ve done… and they have gone from the high humidity of summer in Germany to the frozen and desiccating wastes of Alaska.
As for hardness, it is substantially harder than ebony (using Erik’s poke the center punch into the wood Moh’s test).
The only thing it isn’t is inexpensive It’s pretty pricey to have the treatment done. The price of wood for one flute is around $80.
I think that we will see it catch on as a viable material as more folks play instruments made from it. I’ve had a couple people whose names you would probably recognize play it and so far it has received pretty good marks.
Erik
It seems the answer would best be answered by the results of some of the top flutemakers actually making a maple instrument to the specifications of a Pratten and/or Rudall & Rose style flute.
I know in the realm of Highland pipes maple has proven to produce a big, bright sound. Apart from the maple chanters I mentioned above there have been some maple drones made too. One set in particular was played in top-level, competitive pipe bands. If you can’t bring a big, bright bagpipe to a band at that level you are asked to leave or get another bagpipe. Granted a bagpipe is under the influence of reeds but with a knowledgeable and accomplished musician it’s easier to see the line between the instrument and the reeds or embouchure and blowing.
The downfall of maple in woodwind instruments is all of the seasoning and impregnating. Maple didn’t catch on in Highland pipes because the pipemakers didn’t really have time for it. Blackwood is in too high of demand to make room for another wood that needs more preparation before and during its time on the lathe. Trad flutes are much more of a customized craft than Highland pipes so maple stands a better chance of taking a place among the other woods provided it can perform in a way the customer likes.
Good topic however you look at it.
Cheers,
Aaron
Play recorder? Never!
Well, actually I have one on my desk,
but I only play it furtively and
with the shades drawn.
Please don’t tell anybody.
The big, bright sound mentioned above
is precisely what I associate with
maple. Not mellow… Boxwood
is mellow.
