I picked up an old “Melody Flute” at an antique shop recently. It’s actually a nickel plated penny whistle in C with a little mouthpiece made onto the side of it so that it plays like a flute. The words MELODY FLUTE are stamped on it.
Does anyone know anything about this - how old might it be, etc.?
It’s really breathy and doesn’t make a strong sound. Is it possible to tweak it to improve the sound? Or is it so “valuable” like it is (!) that it shouldn’t be tampered with?
I probably have the same type that you do (although I don’t have it in front of me at the moment). Around the fipple, is there a rope-like pattern? I got mine at a flea market and the seller didn’t know much about it. He had gotten it from a music school. I think I paid $10 for it 5 years ago (I would have paid $20).
I haven’t tweaked mine because I didn’t think it would do much good. Since the mouthpiece forces the air to smack into the other side of the flute and then make a 90 degree turn down the shaft, I don’t think the tone would get stronger from fipple modifications. Unlike a flute where you could change your embouchure to add power, it’s tough for a whistle’s airflow to stop short like that. I think it’s destined to be quiet by design.
Yours is the second one I’ve ever heard of in existence. Hopefully someone will respond with more info.
I have two of these. The first one I picked up on eBay about four years ago. It has seen a lot of use is slightly bent, has teeth marks in the little mouthpiece thingie and the nickel plating is worn off from around the finger holes. I have a kind of sentimental attachment to this one because it seems to have been used a great deal by someone for many years. The second one is also from eBay. Bought it about 2 years ago it’s in virtually brand new condition. Not a scratch or ding on it.
Both play with a very airy sound. Not bad but not great. I fool around with them a bit every so often. I did some research on these and they were once quite common and were also made in Bb at one time. The company no longer exists. There have been a couple of threads on this forum in the past about these. They turn up occasionally on eBay.
By the way I bought each of mine for under $10 (‘:D’)
Yes, these are odd critters. I dug mine out of the back of a music store inventory around 1982, and it had probably been there a good 20 years then. The stamped label reads “Made by Melody Flute Co. Laurel, Md.”, then a line and the letter C for the key. And W508 is stamped beneath the fipple mouthpiece.
If you hold the thing sideways in playing position and look directly through the mouthpiece, you’ll notice that the fipple blade is very high, nearly at the top of the windway, with a considerable expanse of cutaway hole beneath it. This means that much of your breath is probably going directly into the body of the instrument instead of out across the top of the blade. (And my apologies to the aerodynamics experts out there for my ignorance of the physics involved!) By contrast, on most whistles I’ve seen the fipple blade sits fairly low in the windway profile.
Seeing this, I once took a small piece of plastic from an old credit card, cut it to fit snugly the length and width of the windway, and inserted it in the bottom, along the windway floor. This narrowing of the windway delivers a more focused, faster stream of air higher up toward the blade, and seems to result in a purer, less breathy, more whistle-like tone with better back pressure. This is an easy tweak to try, and it’s completely reversible – just pull the plastic out.
Have fun with your toy. Maybe we can convince Dale to start a new Melody Flute forum
I made one out of PVC once and a few “Walking Stick Flutes” from bamboo and my observations are that if the windway is real short, the angle of how you tilt it in your mouth will affect the clarity of the tone.
So, I guess that you might try this on these flutes. Just try rotating the flute so that the windway comes out of the mouth at an angle instead of straight.
As a result of this, I made the windway longer for more stabile sound
Yes, that’s certainly true of the Melody Flute. The windway + window is a short 22 mm, tip to blade, versus 34 mm on a Generation C. And tipping the windway downward while playing to focus more air onto the blade does give a better tone. But this also involves rotating the instrument away from you enough to put the hands in an uncomfortable position. The mouthpiece is mounted at a 30 degree downward angle to the line of the tone holes to begin with. In any case, I can imagine that the breathy tone of the Melody “Flute” is by design, to approximate the sound of a flute or fife.
