Yes. After 15 years of Boehm fluting, I switched to Irish flute about six years ago. (The whistle was the gateway drug.) I consider the two related, but different instruments. Stylistically, Irish music is very much its own thing, with few–if any–points of reference in Western classical music. If your experience is like mine, you’ll be an absolute beginner at the music, and a semi-beginner at the instrument. (Semi, because you’ll likely make faster progress on the instrument that someone who has no transverse fluting experience, but there are still many new techniques to learn.)
However, your extensive flute background means you’ll want a good flute–you will likely be (or become) unsatisfied with a student or beginner model. What’s your budget, and how long are you willing to wait for a flute?
I’ll guess you’re looking at spending about $500, based on the ebay flute, and I’m guessing you don’t want to wait a year or two for delivery. That narrows the field substantially. While there are some good polymer flutes available (such as Rob Forbes’), I prefer wood, so that limits the field a bit further.
Copley’s 3-piece all-wood flutes meet all the above parameters.* Intonation is excellent, the tone is rich (and capable of good volume and projection), the low D is solid, and wood quality is high. There are a couple of different embouchure cuts available–the squared one may feel more familiar to a Boehm player. (What you give up at with the all-wood model is a tuning slide, but that’s not critical.)
That’s not to say there aren’t other good flutes available for a comparable price, but Copley’s are the ones I like best of the ones I’ve tried.
On the other hand, if you’re able to spend $900-$1200, the field expands quite a bit. (Some nice flutes in that range are available at the Irish Flute Store.)
*I have no commercial interest–just a satisfied customer.
In my last conversation with Ralph he mentioned #'s 53 and 58 as being nice players. They are not blackwood and will likely not be as loud or quite as refined as a Copley or McGee. They will be worlds better than a Pakistani flute and well worth considering if you want to try a wooden flute without spending a large amount of money.
I wrote the maker asking about the origin of the flutes. They listed where all their instruments are or were made. Pertaining to the flutes, they responded, “Our Flutes and Bagpipes are produced in my brother’s workshop in Ogden Utah.”
By other things said in the email, I believe that they are legit local artisans. They said that had contracted their Bagpipe work out but brought it back in-house to keep it up to their quality standards.
I wish I had found this forum sooner! I got one of the McCarty’s off of E-Bay. Not a nice instrument! After grinding on it for 2 hours, I finally got sounds, and rid of leaks… The one good thing about it, it was in tune. How they managed that, I don’t know! Live and learn…
Sorry to hear that, but also: interesting that you can tell us more.
Did you mean you literally had to sand / file down the instrument, or did you use “grinding” in a more metaphorical sense? Also, how is the instrument now? In tune, but also playable?
(As I stated before, I don’t feel to good about the maker putting his own instruments on constant “half price opportunity sale” on eBay, so I wouldn’t really buy any of these. Nevertheless, I think this kind of information is very welcome for people to be able to judge for themselves.)
The embouchure was unfinished, just a rough drilled hole, all the fingerholes were rough, there were tool marks all over the place, and the brass rings don’t even come close to fitting properly. After literally working on it for 2 hours, I got what I would call a high student grade flute. The best part about this flute is that it is in tune. Definitely not something that could be played out of the box. I don’t know a lot about flute making, but having played “classical” style flutes for years, I was able to make small adjustments, check it out, make adjustment–and some quite large–and achieve a playable instrument. (The fact that I am a jeweler and have tons of tools just suited helped ) One of the major problems I encountered was that the tuning slide was so roughly finished it didn’t have a chance of sealing. I spent a considerable amount of time sanding and polishing the pieces down. Oh, and did I mention the fine crack in the head joint? If it wasn’t for the fact that I need a “cheap” flute to haul around and not worry about I would have sent it back immediately.
Conclusion: I’m saving my dollars up for a Professional grade wooden flute; the McCarty, straight out of the box, is not even comparable to a student grade band flute.
I keep on walking into these booby trapped thread revivals.
The thing is - when you use the ‘Search’ function - and find a thread relevant to the topic of interest, it’s easy to forget the dates/times and think it’s a recent thread.
In any case - I’ve written to Mr McCarty - see what he says about his flutes being advertised as ‘Made in Utah’ rather than Pakistan, as the 2 year old OP thread indicated.
Who knows, maybe I’ll hit a secret Rudall & Rose soundalike!
