Picked this up as restoration practice. More cracks than the Montreal Comedy Festival, more missing rings than the audience at an exotic dance show, and an utterly gibbled headjoint. No marks, no reason to think it’s a valuable flute, and I certainly didn’t pay too much.
Here’s the really wild part: It plays! The pads even seal! The barrel joints leak, so the low end is quite delicate, but it’s on at A440 with the slide out 1/4 inch, and the intonation is almost acceptable. I’ve got it sucking up a little moisture for now while I do a little head-scratching as to how I’ll procede.
Tomorrow I’m picking up some stone-dry western maple for my first attempt at turning a headjoint. Wish me luck!
Anyone with ideas on the age and nationality of this flute, please let me know. I’m leaning towards early 20th century French, but I’m likely very wrong.
I’d say either German or French; I don’t know French simple-system flutes as well only having seen a dozen or so in my life, but all the German and French flutes I’ve seen have that one-piece bottom joint (heart and foot are one piece of wood) and nickel-silver keys. I had a German flute that looked pretty similar to this.
That’s strange… Here I can see mostly old french flutes, and I have never seen an example with a one piece bottom joint. That feature seems very german to me. The G# is neither typically german, nor french… The fully lined headjoint looks german as well. The french flutes I have seen almost always have a Cnat key. They did not make cheap 4 keys, (in general 5, 6, 8 keys, or more with the Tulou system), the low end flutes had one key.
It’s quite possible that some of the flutes presented to me by various people as “French” were in fact German and just misidentified! The one-piece bottom joint is definitely a feature of German student flutes, it’s just that most of the “French” ones I recall seeing also had one-piece bottoms but could in fact have been German. Some amateur collectors or sellers automatically class most old flutes with pin-mounted nickel-silver keys as “German” regardless of their actual provenance.
What is the measurement from the C# (L1) to Eb (R3). Then you can look at Terry Mcgee’s site, and look up the measurement to see what it was designed to play at. It sounds like it will be about A=450, as the head bore is so narrow.
Cheers, http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/CsharpEb.htm
249mm. Same as a Meyer, and close enough to modern pitch, I think. Thanks for the link - I’ve been through the McGee site a few times, but I’d never been to that page. Useful!
