I’ve seen/owned P’s flutes made entirely of wood, and others with heads fully lined with silver. Does he make a headjoint that is nickel lined?
Hello Jim
I actually contacted him recently and the latest price list indicates you can chose either a silver lined or nickel lined head.
You can also get it either full lined or half lined. He is able to accomodate odd requests too. He is making me a short foot for example.
Thank you. Am I rt in supposing the nickel lined head is cheaper?
Having bought both nickel silver and sterling to use on my flutes, the nickel is considerably less expensive.
Does it make a difference to tone? Appreciate this may be controversial. But wonder what people think.
None. Both are hard, smooth metals that are fitted in the head joint with adhesive. They don’t serve any resonating function, but merely provide a uniform surface.
Where do you get your nickel tubing, Geoffrey?
I get mine from Allied Supply. I push it through dies using a 3 ton arbor press to get it to the sizes I need. The dies I make using a stack of washers that are glued and screwed together, then inside turned to a taper with the smaller diameter of the taper at the “bottom” of the die. Sizing this requires some testing to make sure I am getting the correct bore ID for the inner slide, and correct ID to slide over the inner slide for the barrel joint. I usually use brass for the inner and nickel for the outer.
For my low flutes I use K&S brass tubing, available from Special Shapes. I usually use the stock sizes rather than compress the metal, and just design my flutes around what is available. I’ve found that the head joint bore on these doesn’t matter as much as the embouchure height. And given that these are narrow bore flutes (with respect to length) any increase in the bore size is usually to the benefit of the tone.
Cheers!
Casey
I’ve purchased nickel tubing from Metalsmith Ltd in the UK. I think Geoffrey got some from there too, although he may have since found a closer source. They have a wide range of useful sizes, and the precision of their construction and ID and OD measurements is good enough to make both inner and outer parts of a tuning slide. Shipping to the US was no problem, at least for the small quantities I bought. Here is a link:
Jon
Jon is right–Metalsmith is the place. I did contact their source for tubing (a company in Germany) with the notion of buying larger batches, but the minimum order was enormous.
anyone know what is up with Metalsmith? I tried contacting them and got no reply, and now their website is not pulling up…
any other links to telescoping tubing? (Specialshapes’ sizes are a little off for me and i am not setup to modify the diameters as Casey is doing.)
edit: Nevermind..its back up.