A friend of mine came by with a spanish made flute. It is made in blackwood with silver rings and comes with a nice case. It is a keyless Pratten copy, played like a Pratten (lots of edge) and beautifully made. The maker is Parrado y Aragon with a web site: www.arpha.com/ . They also make other flute styles, but have to find them on the downloadable catalog. They also make uilleann pipes at a reasonable price. Remember, the northern spanish are celts. These guys are first-class instrument makers, and have made excellent flutes for years. You can get one delivered for under $800 US funds. My friend got his in Spain, where he lives. He has some nice antique and modern flutes by top makers. This is his new favorite. Short waiting time too. Hevia plays this flute and a sound bite is available on the site.
No other link other than that. It works for me. Maybe check your spelling. Also you can go to the UP board and elbogo posted an expanded link under the topic of uilleann pipes in Spain or something like that.
Hi there,
coulf you explain me the meaning of :
" played like a Pratten (lots of edge) and beautifully made"
I’m a newbie and I’m wondering what are the diff between R&R and Pratten …
Cheeers,
I play Arhpa flutes too. Really they are very fine instruments. I play a keyless pratten model, but I’m waiting for a five keyed model. I will tell you.
I’m assuming this is just a badly worded description. Simplistically, it is often said the Pratten is particularly strong in tone and harder-edged, the Rudalls smoother and more fluid. The latter is often false, as Rudall-design flutes can vary from small to large holes as can their bores, and can often sound as loud and hard as a Pratten design. So, in real life, well-made flutes of either design, and their modern hybrids in-between, can play a variety of tones and volumes, mostly depending on the embouchure cut and, of course, the player. The larger the holes and bores, generally speaking, the louder and harder edged the sound can be made to sound when pushed to do so. If this flute is essentially a Pratten-design, that’s what I believe the description refers to.
Gordon
I goofed bigtime . The “h” is in the wrong place, the web site can be found at: www.arhpa.com .
Gordon did a good job of explaining my poorly-worded description of Pratten tone. This maker also makes a nice irish style flute which is of their own design, much like a big-bore R&R. It has a more rounded embouchure than the Pratten, yielding almost as loud a flute with a smoother overall tone. Again, really top quality flutes at nice prices.
The site requires a flash plug-in to navigate, and some info. is sort of hidden. The library contains more flute stuff than the store. There evidently are several spanish flute and UP makers, some, including these guys, can really run with the big dogs; which is a badly worded way of saying they can hold their own with other, more known top makers, at prices and services which can’t be beat. They make other models of flute as well.
I remember this site; it drove me crazy. Very slow, and it’s that famous game of “try to find out where you need to click”, where the developers cleverly hide all the site’s functionality behind pretty graphics.
I heard good things about these flutes too, though i haven’t seen one yet.
. The “h” is in the wrong place, the web site can be found at: 
