FOR SALE: ANONYMOUS 5-KEY C19TH ENGLISH MADE BAND FLUTE IN F
SOLD
Beautiful little flute with no serious issues, fully cleaned, overhauled and set up - full description, pics and demo links below. Plays well at A=440Hz. Anonymous – no maker’s marks whatever, but stylistically almost certainly London made.
ASKING PRICE £360.00
I’m willing to sell and despatch to most places worldwide - all carriage and transaction costs thereof to be borne by the purchaser in addition to the quoted (or negotiated) price of the instrument - please p.m. me for details. I can also offer a trial purchase facility - details of terms on request.
Interested parties, please p.m. me (forum rules). Include your direct e-address and I’ll get back to you asap. Thanks.
Video Clips:
BoxNet downloads:
Description, scales & arpeggios
The Rights of Man
Winnie Hayes’ Jig/The Lonesome Jig
YouTube links:
Description, scales & arpeggios, The Rights of Man
Winnie Hayes Jig & The Lonesome Jig
N.B. I posted these a couple of weeks back on the clips thread. The bit in the description one about the missing crown is now out of date as I have been able to get one made.
System: Standard 5-key “Simple System” – block-mounted keys for “Eb”, short “F”, “G#”, “Bb”, “C”, (fully chromatic). Tuning slide and adjustable stopper.
Materials: Cocuswood or similar rosewood body; metal fittings in German Silver (cupro-nickel alloy) save for brass head and barrel liner tubes, brass leaf springs and wire pins to all the keys.
Sounding Length: (tuning slide closed) 430mm, “C#- Eb” length 215mm.
Note: all keys and tonehole/fingering names mentioned here are, as is conventional, those used on a normal D flute, not those of the actual pitches produced by them. A Band Flute in F is treated as a transposing instrument a minor third above “normal”. Therefore, the six-finger note is written/read/referred to as “D” but sounds F, etc.: to produce written parts for it, to sound at the correct pitch they must be written a minor third lower to preserve the normal note-sign/fingering correlations.
Pitch: Plays well enough at A=440Hz with tuning slide open c17mm (in average British temperatures/humidity and with my moderately rolled-in embouchure).
Provenance: from a source in Hampshire, May 2008.
Description/Commentary: This very nice little instrument is, on stylistic grounds, most probably English and London made, probably from the middle of the C19th. It was always a better-than-average quality instrument as band flutes go. There is no trace of any maker’s stamp, but there is a letter F stamped on the underside of the touch of the C key – most likely an indication of the pitch of the flute it was sized/designed for rather than a key-maker’s initial mark, though that is of course possible. It has been fully overhauled and set up ready to play.
This flute has medium size tone-holes. It speaks sweetly, openly and resonantly, with a particularly pleasant and strong low register. It can be sounded very acceptably with the kind of tone sought after in modern Irish Music circles. There are some intonation issues by modern standards and expectations, as is commonly the case with this kind of instrument; sharp “A” (2-finger note), flat “F#” (4-finger note) etc. The “A” was significantly sharp and out-of-line with the rest of the scale, so I have retuned it by applying beeswax in the A (3rd finger) tone-hole: this is removable without harm to the tone-hole, and also adjustable.
It is certainly preferable to use the “correct” classical fingerings as much as possible; venting the “Eb” key routinely, and especially for “E” in all three octaves, the “F” key for “F#” in bottom and middle octaves and so on, except for on swift passing notes. A good player using the instrument regularly will learn to accommodate these “problems” and “lip the notes in”.
The Head Joint is fully lined with metal tubing. The original turned wooden end cap or “crown” was missing although the cork adjuster part was present and intact. I have had a replacement crown made in the closest matching wood available to me – not perfect, but no more varied than some of the joints! I have renewed the actual stopper with part of a plastic wine cork faced with a nickel-silver disc, rather than natural cork. There are metal ferrule bands at both ends of the wooden tube. The embouchure is in virtually perfect original condition.
The Barrel is partially lined by the lower portion of the tuning slide; the lower mortise is unlined but both ends are fitted with a ferrule band. Both parts of the tuning slide are in good condition and are a firm but easily moved, airtight fit.
The Upper Middle Joint has upper and lower tenons with (renewed) thread lapping. It carries the three keys for, “C”, “Bb” and “G#”. The original spring on the “Bb” had collapsed with metal fatigue: I have replaced it with a specially made tempered nickel-silver leaf spring affixed to the key by the remains of the original sprue-rivet.
The Lower Middle Joint has an unlined upper mortise with a ferrule band and a tenon at the lower end with (renewed) thread lapping. The joint carries the short “F” key. The pressure of the spring against the wooden mounting block via the pin has caused a small chip of the lower-side block to split off (a common problem), and this I have glued back into place. However, because the split is through the pin hole, this may prove a weak repair and it may in future be necessary to file down the block and introduce a new piece of wood and shape it to matching profile – I chose not to do so during this repair, preferring to persist with the original chip as it had not been lost.
The Foot Joint has an unlined upper mortise and ferrule bands at both ends. It carries the “Eb” key, the original spring of which had also collapsed and has been replaced as for the “Bb” key, save that I was unable to re-use the original sprue-rivet and had to drill the touch and rivet right through to attach the new spring.
General: All the cast keys are in excellent condition and have been polished up by hand, re-padded, re-buffer corked, oiled, aligned and adjusted. All are mounted on the original short brass wire push pins through the wooden “turned-in” blocks on the flute tube. The pads have been renewed with modern commercial fine leather-on-felt-and-card clarinet pads and the pads secured in the cups in the traditional manner with shellac. Three of the tempered brass leaf springs are original and secured to the key-shafts by sprue-rivets, two have been replaced as detailed above. All the original ferrule bands are present and intact and have been removed, cleaned, polished and glued back in place. The tuning slide/head liner tube has been cleaned and polished.
The overall cosmetic condition of the instrument is very good – the fine-grained reddish brown (probably) cocuswood is intrinsically attractive and there are only a few dents or scratches, including a small nick to the edge of the “F#” tone-hole (5th finger) which does not affect playing/the seal of the hole. There are no cracks or splits whatever. The different joints have aged to different shades of red-brown as they were not all from the same baulk of timber – this is common with old cocuswood flutes and does not indicate a mixture of parts from different instruments, as is clear from the profile and the matching ferrule bands etc. I have treated the exterior surface of the wood with “Renaissance Wax” and the interior with a proprietary mineral-based woodwind bore oil.
There is no original case with this instrument.
The eventual purchaser would be well advised initially to treat this flute like a new wooden instrument as it may well not have been played at all for many years prior to my obtaining it. It is most likely more stable than a brand new one would be, but for safety’s sake I would advise “playing it in” gradually over a couple of months, taking extra care to dry it well after playing and oiling the bore quite frequently for a year or so. (Further advice may be found on the Internet on oiling and playing in of wooden flutes.)
Comments and discussion or queries about the actual instrument welcome as normal posts to this thread, but please help me observe C&F rules by making purchase related enquiries via p.m.
Thanks.
Jem.