New Flute Day - Older Seery Ebony

Irish Flute
1

Well, I guess since it’s in my hands now I can come out and say I was the one that purchased this flute from SillyDill ( Thanks Jordan :slight_smile: )

I received it today and wanted to give my first impressions now that I’ve been messing around with it for a couple of hours.

First off, I did a little cleaning and gave it a once over. Beautiful work I have to say. It looked very delicate when I first opened the box but after checking it out for a little bit, I think I thought that because I am so used to my CB Rudall which is maybe a third bigger in diameter at the widest point. Side by side, the Seery is actually about 1 CM longer then the CB but is decidedly thinner.

Fully lined head and barrel. I’m going to guess that the tuning slide is nickel-silver over a brass slide but I could be wrong on that. The rings seem to be the same material (Nickel-silver?) Seems pretty sturdy but understandable how the head and barrel could have cracked. The repair is good and though it is noticeable, it seems to be well done.

The slide had a bit more friction then I like so I took it apart, cleaned it per Terry McGee’s site directions and lubed it with cork grease, also per Terry McGee’s site. (BTW, Great resource there Mr. McGee is a very knowledgeable fellow). I noticed there was a little bit of foreign material in the lined head so I swabbed it out and did a light oiling. Didn’t seem to need much. Jordan took good care of her apparently (Thanks again Jordan :slight_smile: ) Greased the cork tennons up and put her back together to try her out.

Now is where it gets fun. I have to say, I was really looking for something louder for playing in Jams and sessions but I figured I’d check this one out even though it has a smaller bore just because it looked interesting. On first try I will say this is a very easy player. I’d say my CB has a little easier embouchure but the Seery is easier to fill with more back pressure. I might be overblowing so that may be causing extra back pressure. I have to play it some more to figure it out.

As far as actually playing it goes. I pulled out my Dixon to run a three way comparison (I didn’t record it but maybe in a few weeks I will when I am more comfortable with it so that I am fairly assessing it against the other two which I am much more familiar with). Played Amazing Grace and The Butterfly on each a few times and broke the songs up and played various pieces in order on each.

Here’s my results:
Tone
I am always amazed that the Dixon sounds as good as it does. It is much less nuanced then then CB or the Seery but in fundamental tone it really is a good player and strong though two octaves. The Seery seemed to be much happier in the second octave with a fairly shallow low D compared to the other two but it had a nice depth to the tone and seemed to be much more complex then the Dixon. My CB has the warm, woody tone that I love though. Neither of the others could match the first octave from the CB and the second octave was just as good as Seery but more woody (as I would expect when comparing an all wood flute against a fully lined head flute.) with I would say even more depth and complexity then the seery. Results: Burns, Seery, Dixon

Volume
My CB won this pretty handily in both octaves. The Dixon gave it a good run in the 2nd octave but wasn’t even close in the first. The Seery had a few moments when I thought it was going to wake up so this may be a matter of my figuring out what needs to happen to get the volume from it but as of now, it’s the quietest of the three. Results: Burns, Dixon, Seery

Playability
For fingering the Dixon and the Seery were both very fast to me followed by the CB which, although the holes are spaced closer together then the other two, for some reason felt a little slower to me. Might be because the holes are bigger on the CB so they needed a little more fingertip to cover. Results: Seery/Dixon tie, close 2nd Burns

So there it is. My initial impression of this flute. I’ll keep playing with it for a bit and see if it changes as I get better with her. Very nice overall and a very easy player. I don’t think it will be taking over as my main player and I’m not sure she’d work too great around a banjo or a concertina but as a solo player, small group or for recording, she might be perfect. I had a few nice points in there that made me think there is more volume there if I can learn to get it out so we’ll see how she does over the next month or so.

Kind of long but I hope you enjoyed it. I’ll try to get some pics and sound clips over the next few weeks when I get better with her.

2

Forgot to mention one more thing on the Seery. It seems like either the tennon or the cork between the first section and the head swells when playing so it’s a devil to get it apart again after you play for a bit. It’s not tough to put it together, just to get it apart.

If anyone has any suggestions on that one, I’d love to hear them.
Thanks

3

cork grease

or have the cork replaced with better cork, being an organic quality control is tricky


I wonder if/when the synthetics used in wine corks will become available/popular.

4

thanks for the review; now i don’t have to spend tons of money in a burning desire to know what it would play like… i can wait until one is more readily available. :slight_smile:

5

Seems like the tenon is not so bad today. It’s still a bit tight after playing for a while but it’s not nearly as welded in place as it was yesterday. I have a feeling that the cork is reacting to the humidity change from transport between Jordan’s house and NJ.

Also, in a quest to see if I could do anything about the first octave, I took out my trusty tuner and started playing around a bit. Found that to keep in tune, the tuning slide had to be pretty far out, maybe 1.5cm. So I checked the tuning in Low D, second octave D and 3rd octave D. I found that when the low D was dead on, 2nd octave D was fairly sharp, I could lip it to close to being on target though, 3rd octave D was even sharper, almost into a Eb and I couldn’t get that too near D no matter what I did with it (other then moving the tuning slide which wasn’t what I wanted to do)

So I figured maybe the stopper was off some. Took out a small dowel and measured the distance from the edge of the embouchure hole to the cork. It was about 14mm. A quick search lead me to the fact that around 19mm is the norm give or take a mm. I pushed the cork back to 19mm and reassembled everything. Tuned to the low D, found the tuning slide only had to be a little over .5cm now. I immediately noticed the low D was stronger and 2nd octave D was almost dead on. Unfortunately I lost the 3rd octave D. Took it apart again and move the cork 1mm towards the embouchure hole and tried again. This time I had a solid lower octave D, in tune withe the 2nd octave D and the 3rd octave D with little change to the angle of my embouchure. I lost the 3rd octave above E but I don’t use that anyway and am much happier having a more present low D and in tune high D.

Still haven’t found a lot of volume with it but it is definitely a nice sounding and playing flute.