Having had no luck trying to sell my Hawkes and Son flute, I’m wondering if
people are inclined to play newer instruments as opposed to the older ones? What’s your preference? I would really like to hear from some of you regarding this. Please explain your preference. Thanks,
Arbo
Tough one.
There’s something to be said for playing an instrument made by one of the modern masters. They tend to have been tweaked to play the music WE play (IrTrad and beyond) and you can have a lot of fun interacting with a flute maker to get exactly the flute you want. Also, there are some very-well-made inexpensive flutes: polymers, bamboos, you name it.
Old flutes are a WHOLE 'nother set of problems. There’s a technique to playing a “period” instrument, and most of them are not in tune with themselves unless you vent various keys (like Eb): they were intended as orchestral instruments and had to have more than two octaves will reliable accidentals. There are the OLD MASTERs, like Hudson Prattens or actual Rudall-n-Roses, which (even when in bad shape) command a high price. There are tons of low-to-middling, incredibly-variable-quality German-made flutes. Old flutes often need a little work to play at their best. Yada yada, etc. They’re often cracked (not that modern ones aren’t), and some people are scared off by the cracks.
I guess I enjoy both experiences, playing new and playing old, but they’re definitely different. It’s even hard to generalize this far, but I’d say that in some ways the old flutes are a little scarier because you really don’t know what you might be getting.
It’s so much a matter of opinion, just like everything else. And I know you know that, you’re just kind of asking. It may just come down to the fact that Hawkes flutes just don’t have that cachet that a Rudall would have.
Stuart
So, let’s consider that you have a stable, great playing older flute… what’s the attraction? I have owned flutes by David Quinn, Sam Murray, Gilles LeHart, and played Sweethart, Olwell, Byrnes, Hamilton, Copley, Grinter, and Wilkes to name a few. Great flutes many of them. But I find the sound so similar on many of them. Not terrbile, similar. It’s almost as if there exist a conspiracy to bring the trad flute into this one, universal type of sound?
Arbo
That the flute market can be segmented according to vintage may be an oversimplification. I think hyperbolic testimonials and who’s playing what will command the highest prices, assuming the market has not saturated.
Hi,
Your Hawkes & Sons looks like a awesome flute. The problem might be your selling it on ebay. It is a finicky market. One thing maybe offering it for so much to start, you have to get the bidders primed, by starting it as a lower price. 
Maybe Doc Jones can sell it for you, so you make your money back on it. I know there is someone out there that would love to have a honking Hawkes!
I think it depends on the flute player, as to there decision to go with a new flute, or a antique. Personally, I like the vintage flutes, especially the classics like R&R, Pratten, Clementi, Fentum, and many that aren’t that famous, like Butler, Liddle, Potter, etc. etc. For someone that wants a 8 key flute, and not be able to pay $3k, it is still possible to get a nice playing 8 key flute for under $1,500, sometimes for under $1,000. There are some tuning issues at times, but I think that gives them a more complex tone. You also can’t beat that aged Cocuswood.
I am not just saying this because I have 23 antique flute… 
I have 3 R&R flutes in the shop at the moment for repairs, and I must say I have never heard anything quite like these flutes! The closest in my collection would be my Fentum or Blackman flute, and these I believe might have been made by Wylde. The R&R has some magic to it.
Haven’t played to many other makers flutes, but I am sure they are all unique in there own way.
My 2 bits worth…
Old or new dosen’t matter - what matters is that the flute is a good instrument, then the rest is up to you. Doesn’t help if you have a mint Rudall & Rose, or a brand new Murray or Wilkes if you don’t listen and listen and practice and practice
I am offering an eight-key Wilkes-Wylde flute for sale. Head joint and tuning barrel made by Chris Wilkes. Chris has identified the body by Henry Wylde.
The flute plays beautifully and is in excellent tune, fine for modern sessions. A=440 with the head out about 3/8", which is ideal.
I am asking $2,400, including shipping to the US. Let me know if you want pictures or more information. I will accept a keyless flute in partial trade.
Flutes like this, at this price, are increasingly hard to come by.
David, check your PMs.
I love my Hamilton flute…it’s my session flute and I’m proud to play it.
My Seery and my M&Es are also lovely flutes each in their own right.
But even though my only “period” flute is an old cantankerous German 8-key, and there are days when it will barely play…there are also days when it still can sing, and on those days, I feel like maybe the unique sound of that old flute connects with itself at the other end of its life and echoes backwards and forwards through time.
So that’s the attraction to me: that old flute is a living record of a time that is gone and will not return. It’s kind of like having a living dinosaur for a pet, I think: it takes a lot of work just to keep it going, but the result is that you have something absolutely unique: a slice of an older world encapsulated within our modern one.
–James
[quote=“ImNotIrish”]… I’m wondering if
people are inclined to play newer instruments as opposed to the older ones? What’s your preference? I would really like to hear from some of you regarding this. Please explain your preference.
Ahh, older flutes…
I have an older flute, made in Paris by L. Lot, which has an older (A=435) scale, and which took me many hours of patient labor to get its pads shimmed just right.
As far as playing in “modern = 440” tune goes, the left hand tends to be more or less about right, while the right hand needs to be sharpened just a bit.
At the bottom line, while the mechanism resembles a plumber’s nightmare, on a good day this flute SINGS like no other flute I have ever played.
Definitely worthwhile!!
My vote is newer flutes. My reasons are myriad, but the two primary ones are:
First, my preferred material is polymer. I have occasional deployments to the desert, for one thing. For another I don’t like fuss. Any kind of fuss I can trim out I’m happy to do so. PVC and Delrin are durable and won’t mind overmuch if they go from a 17C server room to a 37C desert and then back into the 17c server room. Polymer flutes are low fuss. And with a good player they sound good.
Second, I like to think that an antique in good condition, properly in tune, etc, should be kept only by those musicians with the time and patience to keep them in that kind of shape. I would greatly love to have a whirl on someone else’s at a session maybe, but I just know that if my lazy self were the one maintaining and caring for it somehow it would develop a crack so wide that all the king’s horses and men couldn’t put it back together. An antique playable flute is a piece of history and I just don’t trust myself to keep it in repair.
So yeah, it’s new flutes for me.
“…that old flute is a living record of a time that is gone and will not return. It’s kind of like having a living dinosaur for a pet, I think: it takes a lot of work just to keep it going, but the result is that you have something absolutely unique: a slice of an older world encapsulated within our modern one.”
James,
I believe you hit it ‘spot on.’
Arbo