My keyless Aebi arrived yesterday in its nice aluminum case. For whatever reason the customs folks didn’t catch it on the way through (yay!), so the mailperson delivered it to my door. As it wouldn’t fit through the mail slot (s)he just left it on the front porch all day in plain view of the street. Happily, no one who noticed cared enough to grab it, so it was there when I got home 8 hours after the mailperson usually comes. (This is better than a previous time, when the mailperson kindly hid the parcel under the barbecue around the back so it wouldn’t get stolen, but didn’t leave a message in the mail slot, so by the time I happened to see it a few days later, the Vancouver rains had soaked through the parcel. Good thing it wasn’t cold, and was the flute was wrapped in plastic bubble wrap.
The blackwood has very appealing reddish grain visible in the sunlight, the rings are wide, flattened D shapes (a narrow font), the tenons are wrapped in thread. Unsurprisingly, it looks like the flutes on his website.
My basis for comparison are the following flutes: Jon C Rudall-Carte delrin medium large bore, large holes; Bryan Byrne Rudall copy with small bore, medium holes), Paddy Ward blackwood Hawkes copy (large holes, medium large bore).
Largest oval embouchure of any flute I’ve played, chimney depth on the high side. The embouchure is more undercut than my other flutes except the Ward. I’ll happily measure anything if folks want, as long as it can be done with a ruler. The bore is clearly complex, but I can’t measure that.
Stretch is OK for me, but I have big hands, and I 'd say it is much as any flute I’ve played. The maker says the holes are 0.5mm bigger than those on medium-holed Rudall copies, and this is true for holes 4 and 5, but for the rest, there some are bigger, some are smaller, and some are the same size compared to the Byrne. All this says is that to bring it in to tune, the maker played with hole sizes. Getting back to stretch, because the holes are not particularly large, they don’t exacerbate the stretch issues.
The Aebi is the heaviest flute I’ve played, but it’s nicely balanced. Its outside diameter is as large as any flute I’ve played, so it’s not a slimline Rudall copy like the Byrne I have. The bore is bigger than the Byrne, but smaller that the Jon C and Ward. Polish of the bore is very good, but not impeccable. Fit and finish is otherwise good, although one can see small signs of the final tuning steps during undercutting in the lack of perfect roundness of some holes, and the ring at the end of the foot has some nicks and gouges in it.
While it’s the flute players job to play the flute in tune, the Aebi is particularly easy to play in tune through two octaves (ie few adjustments in direction of windstream required). I don’t find it difficult to play the Ds at pitch, or have to bring the F# up very much, and only modest adjustments are needed for A, C#.
The maker designs it to have its head pulled out to create a resonating chamber in the barrel, and sure enough, I pull out the head more than I do on my other flutes to bring the flute to A440.
I’d describe the flute as stable and unfussy-once one finds the embouchure that gives the desired tone, small variations work for the whole range of the flute. E’s are relatively unmuffled. The 0XX 000 fingering for the C (lower octave) is better in tune than 0X0 000,but the latter is much less muffled. I don’t have to search for any note.
As we know all know the flute doesn’t matter more than a few percent for the sound, so I’ll spare you the adjectives. Unaccountably the maker forgot to include the Harry Bradley attachment, so I still sound like me.
Having said that, learning to play the Byrne made me a better player after the addition of a year, lessons, and several hundred hours. I think the same will be true for the Aebi .
My wife asked me then if the new flute blew my other flutes away. I said no, and that I hadn’t played it enough to discover its virtues, but I had played it enough to discover my faults. I am looking forward to getting the flute broken in, and used to it. If I discover anything except that it sounds better the more I play it, I’ll let you know.
Viewer discretion advised for next paragraph as upcoming flute buying opportunities will be presented.
When the Aebi is broken in and playable full time, I will be selling my Byrne and my Ward, as I return to flute monogamy (the Jon C I will keep for travelling).
Best,
Hugh
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