I’ve been offered an old 8 key wooden flute for sale, but it needs alot of work.
It looks old, but has no maker’s mark, and seems to have a fairly modern key layout.
It has a nasty crack, locked joint and the pads need changing
I don’t know what pitch it is. Overall length is 650mm and sounding length is 560mm.
I can’t tell if it cylindrical or conical bore.
I’m hoping it’s not some “franken-flute” or cheap “flute-like-object”
I’d really appreciate if you could help me identify this flute and decide if it is worth buying.
Any advice is very welcome
Pass. It’s about 20mm short on sounding length to be at modern A=440 pitch. Otherwise, appears conical, not fond of post mounting myself (prefer blocks), small-holed top hand, French arrangement of G# key? Cracks will add to the repair cost to put into good playing condition.
Definitely French manufacture. Definitely conical bore. You don’t get Böhm taper heads with tuning barrels, so head must be cylindrical and therefore body conical. I’ve had similar looking 8-key Eb flutes through, but they’ve had a slide closed SL of 540mm and played at A440 with slides open 8-15mm. As Kevin says, 560mm is too short for even a very high pitch D flute. I’d guess this will be a low pitch Eb flute, A435 or lower.
How much are they asking for it? I’ve been collecting these with an eye towards turning them into Cuban Charanga Flutes using the methods of the masters. These are the type they used, commonly by Thibouville, Martin etc.
IMO already a bit too much for me to try. Almost everything was said: probably low pitch Eb. Same problem as the English high pitch D: somewhere between modern D and Eb, and not very usable in ITM.
The different wood colors is not necessarily indication of a frankenflute, it could also mean it was a lower quality instrument to begin with (like the fact that it has no marks). The rings seem coherent to me: the ones surrounding the slide are smaller, which is usually the case.
What bothers me the most are the big holes in the right hand section: maybe it was modified? French flutes have a very flat F#, some people will try to raise it… Sometimes it’s well done (Patrick Olwell did that from time to time), sometimes it’s butchered.
I personally love the french G#, find it much better than the English one. My dream flute would be an 8 key small holed Rudall with French keys
