I’m looking at pictures of Hammy’s block mounted keys. The blocks seem very close to the tone holes, to the point where they even seem to touch. Does this cause any difficulty or weirdness when covering the tone-holes with your fingers? Obviously it can’t be much of a problem, since he’s such a respected maker, but I was wonder if this is a “takes getting used to” kind of thing.
I’ve played a four key hammy. No, there’s no problem
with blocks. I use classical grip, not piper’s; possibly Hammy’s
blocks would represent a problem for piper’s
grip, but I didn’t try it.
The one key related difficulty I found is that the long F nat
key was too short to reach easily. I believe
some others on this board who own a Hammy
have reported the same problem.
On the other hand, Hammy modified the
key for them.
By the way, note that Hammy also makes post-mounted keys.
I don’t have any problems with the blocks being in the way, but I also do not use piper’s grip. I have a 6 key and cannot easily reach the long F nat or C nat keys, which I plan on getting adjusted eventually when I can afford it.
I have a 6-key Hammy Eb and the short-F block sometimes bumps my ring finger. On my D Murray I used to get chafed in about the same spot from the short F’s key pin until I flipped the pin around (thank heavens it fit both ways; that was getting old!).
However, I recently played a set on someone else’s D Hammy and didn’t notice any “digital interference.”
It’s never been an issue.
I did have Hammy lengthen the touch of the long-F key, but that was to accommodate the fact that I have short, stubby fingers, and had nothing to do with the positioning of the blocks.
–James
No problems here, on a Hammy 6-key. I’ve also seen piper’s grip folks play it OK, without complaint.
Kevin Krell
Well, I don’t have short stubby fingers and I could
very barely make it to the long-F key touch.
Maybe I would have gotten used to it.
Thanks for the feed back everybody. I’m narrowing down my decision for a new flute.
I remember reading that Paul McGrattan had keys customized to accomodate pipers’ grip on his Hamilton flute. I don’t know if that means the blocks were positioned differently.
I have no reason to think Hammy’s blocks are ill suited
to piper’s grip; nor is there any evidence that
the poster uses it.
However blocks can create problems for piper’s grip,
depending on how they’re configured.
I believe the Seth Gallagher keyed flute
is blocked so as to accomodate piper’s (as well
as classical); also there’s a rt hand Bb touch.