I just played a gig with a wooden flute and also a delrin flute.
It began to occur to me that the delrin flute, a bottom of the line
Copley, while it sounds to me less good than the excellent rudally
flute I was also playing, probably sounds about as good to the
audience. I know some of us are converting entirely to delrin.
Well, I’m wondering which delrin flutes you’all think sound best.
Of course I appreciate people aren’t necessarily going to agree,
but I’d like to know what you think. I once played briefly a
Ward delrin flute, which as I remember seemed the best delrin
flute I’d yet played. But there are other makers about, e.g. Baubet.
I remain a fan of wood, but the carefree use of a delrin flute (I play
mine mostly on the street) becomes increasingly seductive. Anyhow
suggestions, opinions, welcome.
Due to my wood allergies, I have owned a number of delrin flutes. IMO, there aren’t really any delrin flutes out there that are better than the Copley, although several cost more.
To me the Seery and M&E and Baubet are a step down.
The Somers flute is well made and plays nicely,l and had good volume, but the one I have has the emboucher cut at an angle similar to a Murray, which I find rather different from other flutes. Not a problem per se, just tougher for one who switches between flutes.
I tried a Forbes flute and thought it was OK, but didn’t live up to the hype. I liked my Copley better and sold the Forbes. I really wanted to like more, but I was seriously underwhelmed.
I had Glenn Watson make me delrin flute some years ago, it’s a Rudall like his wooden flutes, very well made, and as “Rudall” a flute to play as any. BUT… It cost me around $1800, for a keyless, same as his wooden flutes, so I don’t there’s much demand. I’ll also say that flute requires the most focused, accurate embouchure of any flute I’ve ever played.
I haven’t played one of Jon’s flutes or the Ward, so I can’t comment on those.
Thanks. The delrin Copley I have is the bottom of the line, as mentioned.
I’ve played more expensive delrin Copley’s and liked them less well, both the
sound and the look of them. The bottom of the line has no metal at all, and
has an elegant look as a consequence, IMO. It sounds very good, but not great.
If it was all I had I’d be a happy camper, and it has lots of volume and earns
its keep on the street.
I heard a Somers Rudall a few weeks ago in a session and played it very briefly. It seemed good
but I needed time with it, and the owner wasn’t a strong player, so I couldn’t
tell what it could really do. It’s an option, especially given your comments.
Anyone played the Ward? My experience with it was impressive but it’s been
quite awhile and I barely remember it.
Great topic for a thread, Jim. Thank you.
I’ve had a Seery, three M&E’s and a Walt Sweet Shannon. On the Wooden side I’ve had three Sweethearts and one of Casey’s most amazing folk flutes.
I still have one of the M&E’s, the Sweet… And today I received a Somers aluminum and delrin. All the wood is gone.
That said… Hands down, the Sweet is my favorite, but the Somers is very impressive. I like the Sweet because it is very loud, has great response, excellent intonation throughout two plus octaves, it has a quality I call “snap” only cuz I am not good enough to know the technical term. The bell is strong. Octave break overs are consistent. Air requirements are modest. Fingering is comfortable. The craftsmanship is excellent.
The Somers is still too new to me, but I could see it becoming my favorite. I had never played a Pratton-esque flute. Just wow.
I love the ease of maintenance of the delrin flutes. I love the immediate playability of the delrin.
I’ll never be as good as most of you all… But I love the delrin. It meets all my needs… And the Sweet lives up to that name… And it’s loud, too.
I suppose I should really try Delrin sometime. Question about it for other flute makers - is one Delrin like the next or are there various grades (density, hardness, elasticity etc.)? Who are your sources?
Material aside, I suspect that the differences in these flutes has more to do with the specific makers’ bore profiles, embouchure cuts, voicing parameters, etc. Thus if I built a Delrin flute it would play similarly to my wooden versions. I would aim for bore profiles of a well aged flute, including any out of roundness, as these do change in wood for the better over time.
Casey
Agreed. 
Worth a go, Casey! When I saw you down as ‘last post’ to the thread, I expected to find a pro-wood, anti-Delrin response, so am happy to discover I was wrong. FWIW, I do prefer my Solomon blackwood, keyed Copley to my Delrin unkeyed Copley, but largely because of the keys, the beauty of the wood and an embouchure that, while nominally identical, I can just get that tiny bit more out of (this last I genuinely believe being coincidental to the material used). So a good wood flute’s always going to be a more beautiful object than a Delrin one because wood is beautiful where Delrin is functional, and I cherish my wood Copley all the more for its beauty, but they both make darn good flutes!
I’ve had a variety of delrin flutes over the years including a Cochran (Jon Cornia), Ward, Copley, Sweet, and Baubet. Haven’t had a chance to try either a Sommers or a Forbes. From this experience, I’d have to agree that the Copley might well be considered the standard against which the others should be compared.
That said, I suspect that each of us has specific features we look for in our ideal flute, whether it be that perfect embouchure, ergonomic layout of the fingerholes, weight, diameter, elegance of design, or whatever. And some of these are going to vary within a run by a given maker as they grow and evolve or as they make that final swipe at the embouchure. These, despite being “plastic” are still man-made instruments.
My principal instrument is either a keyless Watson or a keyless Martin Doyle—depending on my mood. Both have unlined heads so I can’t really expect a delrin instrument to sound like either.
I presently have both Copley and Baubet delrins. Mostly I gravitate to the Baubet, partly because it’s newer to me and I’m still getting used to it and partly because it sounds and feels closest to the wooden instruments I have. But the Copley sits, as it has for several years, on my desk to be reached for in those moments of spare time.
Bottom line for me—use the Copley as a basis for decision but look at others to see if they might better fit your particular needs/desires.
Them’s my thoughts for this morning.
Best wishes.
Steve
Don’t read too much into this Peter. It is April 1st after all.
A friend of mine has a Jon Cornia flute in delrin that is simply excellent, although another friend has one that I’m less impressed with.
I wouldn’t say these flutes are “care-free,” as you do need to swab them out otherwise mold can grow on the inside and make you very sick.
Living in a climate with cold, dry winters, I’ve often contemplated getting a delrin flute for winter use, but the drawbacks of having two D flutes would probably outweigh the benefits. I’m a firm believer in sticking with one flute and getting to know it (I do have a C flute and a Bb flute, but they’re different enough that playing them doesn’t affect my playing on my D flute).
Bah, had!
I did wonder about the ‘bore profiles’ bit and how you proposed to do that, but don’t really buy into April Fools especially as a reply to something already started by someone else and when otherwise plausible (think you should go the whole hog, which I’ll now grant you did for you, or not at all)!
Not happy. Not wrong. Disappointed in you after all… not because you don’t want to use Delrin, but because there’s no need for this continual disparaging it which actually puts me off what you do even though I’ve said myself that wood is ultimately more beautiful.
Wonder if this could be climate/conditions-related? Because I’ve never had mould growing in any unswabbed instrument…
The only delrin flute I have played is the one I own.
It is made by John Gallagher and is a large holed Rudall model. It is a little less expensive than his wood flutes but I did not get it because of cost but to take it when I travel to hot, dry climates and it plays beautifully. It does not have silver rings or a silver tuning slide, just a brass one. The rings are machined in. I liked it so much that I ordered the same model in boxwood. I would say there is a little difference in sound and definitely weight. They both play very well.
Here is a blurb about Delrin:
“Delrin® is an acetal homopolymer and has a uniform backbone with a larger crystalline block structure than acetal copolymers providing better chemical bonding. As a result, Delrin® is the stiffest and strongest unreinforced technical engineering polymer available.”
Delrin is the DuPont brand name for acetal plastic and I’ve always used it over other types because I’ve read similar things to the above quote before.
I’ve used it for quite a number of flutes of various kinds. It is quite heavy. It is also not cheap, which is something I reflect on because so often customers think a “plastic” flute should be a lot less expensive. Setting aside the useful trait that you don’t have to season it, Delrin costs about the same as many of the favored flute timbers, depending upon the dimensions that you buy. But for a customer to expect a Delrin flute to cost a couple of hundred dollars less than a wooden one strikes me as barmy. It takes every bit as long to make a good flute from Delrin as it does from wood. The labor is on par and the material cost differences are negligible. I sell Delrin flutes for the same price as wooden flutes, which means that I don’t sell a lot of them 
Having said that, Delrin is a superb flute material in every way, except perhaps the weight for those players who prefer a lighter flute. My own belief about sub-standard flutes made from Delrin (or economy models from reputable makers that are made from Delrin) is that this has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the material. It has to do with the design. Bore profile, embouchure cut, etc. All of the usual things that matter in making a flute. It’s possible that when a maker is offering a budget model flute from Delrin that they unconsciously cut corners to some degree and don’t give it their all. This is just a guess.
On a technical note I’ve found that when reaming Delrin one must be conscious of the flexibility of the material. If the girth of the piece being reamed is not substantial, then it can and does flex and the reamer does not bite as well. This might potentially result in a bore profile that is slightly undersized. This happened to me a couple of times before I noticed it. It’s not a radical deficiency, but a few thousands of an inch matter in the bore.
I totally get that people like wood and I actually prefer wood for aesthetic reasons, but definitely not because I think wood makes a better flute. It doesn’t. Wood makes a more “organic” flute, in that the material choice is more likely to have a subtle impact on the performance of the flute as a result of the inner bore surface, the workability, etc.. Some folks consider that “character” and value it accordingly, as do I. But in terms of acoustic response, projection and overall behavior, Delrin is awesome and very, very consistent.
I would have to agree with this post. I did not know that it was roughly the same cost as timber flutes, material-wise, and I didn’t care. I got it for a specialized purpose and it works well for that. A great travel flute. I did not expect it to cost less since I believe the skill and time spent to make a flute is the biggest cost. The only reason my delrin flute costs less than the boxwood one is that it does not have rings, it does not have a sterling silver tuning slide or an adjustable stopper otherwise it would have cost the same. The boxwood flute is also nitric acid fumed. They both are great but I must admit that I only play the delrn flute if I am traveling. They are both great flutes.
Nicely put, Geoffrey. What you say reminds of Tom Ridenour’s pitch for hard rubber (presumably Ebonite or something very similar) clarinets:
http://www.ridenourclarinetproducts.com/the-grenadilla-myth.html
Of course rubber’s a ‘natural’ material where Delrin’s not, and still needs just that little bit more looking after, but I’m sure this guy’s not making top-quality clarinets from rubber if he thinks they’d be better in wood. And, yes, I still love my wood flute for its beauty and associated feelgood factor.
Yes, one of my wood suppliers shared that article with me after we had a discussion about blackwood (which I thought was very broad minded of him, being his business is selling wood).
But my big objection to Delrin has to do with it’s being an artificial material made by DuPont. But the truth is, that is just a bit of knee-jerk environmentalism with no real logic behind it. I use power tools, I use epoxies, lacquers and various chemicals in my flute making, I use tons of duct tape (pretty artificial), foam brushes, florescent lights, and I drive a gasoline powered automobile down to the store to buy supplies (to name but a few). From that perspective, drawing the line at Delrin would be pretty arbitrary And we are all aware of the impact of harvesting tropical timbers.
Few of us can really achieve the ideal of having some sort of zero-impact approach to our craft. I remember on a bansuri forum some years ago, Jeff Whittier claimed that anyone who made wooden flutes (when environmentally friendly bamboo was available) was “an ecological criminal who should be put in jail”. I thought that to be a bit strong! I suggested to him that such a position was really only unassailable if he did not drive, did not use wood or paper products, and didn’t support any industry that did. And I could also have pointed out the irony that he was making these claims on the internet, which meant that he was using a hunk of plastic and circuit boards to do so, supporting who-knows-what sort of chain of environmentally unfriendly processes!
So while my feelings about Delrin are not unmixed, in the bigger picture I think using it for flutes is a pretty reasonable compromise. And as mentioned by kmag, it does not require things like bore rings to protect the sockets from rupturing or anything like that so that reduces the cost of the more “plain” looking Delrin flutes (though the silver rings still look really sharp on that nice black background!).
I have a delrin RR perfected from Terry McGee that is lovely, I travel with it and use it when playing in iffy places where weather or inebriated people could be an issue. Doesn’t set off any alarms going through customs, and sits out all the time, so is the one I play most. Couldn’t be happier.
I’ve had through my hands various Seery flutes (including one gifted me by Desi), an older M&E & newer R&R M&E. Currently happy with a Delrin Cochran (Jon C.) R&R, Somers R&R & Copley Eb. I do prefer having the rings & slides on the Cochran & Somers.
A question about the Somers RandR. I’ve heard this once at a session, played
by someone not very robust, and I played it briefly, but not long enough
to really get a feel for it–except it did sound like a rudall. Do these, played
by somebody experienced, generate enough volume to be heard in a session?
I don’t mean the session from Hell, just five or six people playing…
I haven’t heard it played in a session. However, it’s not a quiet flute. I doubt it cuts through like a Hammy, though.