After playing my new Hernon flute for somewhat longer than a month I decided to write a review of the flute today. While reading my review, please keep in mind that this is a review about My Own Flute and that I am only playing the flute for about a year. Therefore I don’t have much experience with other flutes or even the skills to play á flute well. All my comments are based on my experience with my Dixon three-piece polymer flute.
Appearance
It looks lovely. I suppose every new blackwood flute looks lovely, but it is so much better to look at than my Dixon. It has this black with a little reddish color through it.
The flute consists of three pieces, a head (with tuning slide), a mid section for the left hand and the right section for the right hand with a C foot.
The head is lined (if that’s the correct term), so there’s metal throughout the head. The embouchure hole is of a rounded-rectangle shape, as can be seen HERE. On the cork screw (what’s this called?) is engraved “MH04”.
The flute has metal tuning slide and rings (I don’t know what material they’re made of) which finishes the flute well.
Sound
This is a tricky one. After a month or so I can get some decent sound out of it. For me it’s not very easy to get a good full sound out of the flute, but now I can sometimes get a glimp of the true power this flute holds. The feeling of breath through a wooden flute is teriffic. Because my embouchure isn’t very focussed yet and used to playing the oval-shaped-embouchure-hole (<-like the word) Dixon it’s fairly hard for me to fill the flute.
Now I’m at the stage that all but the low D and low E are in tune and have a good strength. I have some trouble with the low E and low D, but that will improve with some more practice.
I KNOW it is me and not the flute, because recently we had a gathering of flute players. I offered all of them to play my flute to see what they’d think of it and I could get a chance to hear the real sound of the flute. It was amazing what a sound it could produce. When some better players played a tune or two on it, I was very proud this was my flute 
It had quite some volume and a nice (not shrill) sound. They all thought this was a fine flute and the only comment they gave on it was the strange shaped embouchure hole. Though it needs a focussed stream of air, this wasn’t regarded as a drawback.
I won’t post a sounclip here, although this was very tempting. You might get the wrong idea of the flute, because what you’d hear is definitely the player (and not the flute). Actually I wish I taped a tune from the other flute players.
Extra’s
With the flute came a nice fine case in cherry, which can be seen HERE. It’s a good tight box with two shutters. Not only the box came with it but Marcus sent me a cd as well. It’s his “The Grouse in the Heater” CD on which he plays with his brother P.J. Hernon. There’s some good music on this cd, although there are a few non-traditional instruments (e.g. snare-drum) playing along.
All of this, the flute (with tuning slide and C-foot), Box and Shipping (+ bonus cd) for 490 euro is a real Real bargain. I only had to wait about 4 months for it (even though he had some technical problems with his machinery). I hope to play this flute for a long time to come.
I know I sound like one of these tell-sell hosts, but if you’re interested in one of Marcus flutes visit his website: http://www.piping.se/marcushernon.htm. There are a lot of pictures ánd soundclips of the flute he’s offering. Even if you’re not interested in the flute, take a minute to listen to the soundclips. They’re great.