Hi.
I’m considering to purchase Sweetheart Keyless flute D and I’d be happy to hear feedbacks of people familiar with this flute.
Thanks!
I really like Sweet flutes though as a beginner I did not. I found them hard to play but that was because I had not done the work to produce good tone {this was many years ago hs newer models are a bit easier to play I think}. One of my best flutes is a Keyless Sweet in Eflat that can be heard in my signature and linked from Ralph’s webpage. I like his newer model as well with smaller holes. One of his old Boosey models he used to keep in his shop was one of the best flutes I’ve played.
There is one for sale on Doc Jones site that is an old model with one key for a reduced price. If its the one Ralph was selling as part of his clearance sale which I suspect it is. I played it and thought it was really nice. You may wish to call Ralph and see if he has anything for sale that is old stock I got some great deals from him though that was a good year ago.
I have some very expensive flutes and could be very happy owning just a D sweet that was as good as my Eflat.
Also keep your eye out for a used one as they sell a bit below what they are new on the used market.
All that said have you thought about Casey’s folk flute and also search here your find loads of Sweet threads.
I have an outstanding Sweetheart F flute as well as a great high D whistle.
I have owned and tried a few Sweetheart D flutes, but never got very attached to any of them. I know there are some very good ones out there, though. Best advice is always to try before you buy.
Very good flutes for the price, and sometimes just extraordinary. I’m partial to the cherry wood flutes.
Have one in C that has a lovely rudally sound.
Appreciate your answers guys. What are the drawbacks of Sweetheart in your opinion?
I only have what I hear from others; those issues seem to be mainly cosmetic. Sweetheart flutes have been described as being a little on the rough side finish-wise, but only if you look closely. I don’t know whether that’s true of his finer, keyed blackwood instruments as well; I’ve never held one of those in my hand. Beyond that, the one keyless one I played sounded pretty good to me (I don’t recall anything specific about the flute’s appearance), and a professional fluter I know spoke highly of Sweet’s flutes for playability and tone.
Thanks Nanohedron.
Can anybody tell where does Sweetheart stand comparing to Casey Burns Folk Flute?
My first flute was a Sweetheart flute. I didn’t like it at all. I got a Folk flute afterward and loved it. In fact, I still play it. I found hitting the bottom D almost impossible with the Sweetheart. The Burns flute was very easy, and it had a richer, fuller sound.
They’re really entirely different types of flutes. They’re both all-wood. There the similarity ends. Sweethearts have thin heads, while Casey’s flute has a thicker head than most flutes I’ve played. This means (at least for me personally, and I think most people find this to be the case) that the FF is much easier to play for a beginner. It also means the Sweetheart is lighter – I always found mine to be a good flute to play when I was really tired. The Sweet also has somewhat larger holes. I found it to be more difficult to play than the Burns (I’m a small-holed flute guy), but easier to get an Irish-style sound from.
I wouldn’t ever call either of these flutes better than the other, they’re just different.
i had a 4 key rosewood sweetheart that was really great, and his newer line of keyless seem really nice.
Thanks, that was helpful. I’m going for Sweetheart. Since I’m a left handed player I need a custom cut, Ralph said it would take between 6-8 weeks. This includes two weeks drying, two coats, etc, etc. They make them from scratch and inspect them.
He said they concluded that maple is easier to control and get the best sound out of so now he is making only maple. According to Ralph, different types of wood do not affect the tone. So why do people choose different woods like blackwood, rosewood, etc? He says it’s not sound, it’s fashion and he could make any of his woods sound the same. However, people regard other woods as ‘common’ and want a more ‘prestigious’ wood but whether it sounds good or not is up to the maker. Different woods they offered like maple, cherry, walnut, blackwood were merely for beauty, i.e. different hues of wood.
Artificial material flutes: he says they tried them for years and many of these cracked so they stopped making them.
The wooden flutes he has made since 1974 only a tiny portion have cracked, but it’s rare and if this does happen, they replace or repair.
age old can of worms, eh.
Ralph sez maple gets the best sound & the type of wood doesn’t matter to the tone.
Perhaps it is enough that the player perceives a difference even if the listener does not.
I am going to strongly disagree with him on different types of wood do not affect the tone. They sure do. Some woods are porous, while others have a very smooth, hard grain. Makers don’t use blackwood for beauty, they use it because of its great acoustic tone ability. I have played flutes and whistles by the same maker with different woods, and the woods made an extreme difference.
Common woods, such as Mopane and Blackwood may not have a huge difference because they are very much alike grain and acoustic wise. But other woods will yield a different sound, considering how dense, hard, porous, etc… the wood is.
Plus, he said wood doesn’t matter, yet maple is the best for tone? Did you misunderstand him?
Anyhow the maple sweet flutes sound very good, IMO.
I definitely think the different woods have different sounds,
especially with the sweethearts–but maple is excellent.
i used to own a walnut sweetheart that could produce a surprisingly good tone. and i tried a C in rosewood that sounded terrible. i had a private conversation with someone that seemed to me to explain why a lot of his flutes in softer woods (walnut, maple, cherry vs. blackwood, rosewood) seem to sound better… that beings said, i got a chance to try a flute he made out of apple and i wasn’t so keen on that one either.
i wouldn’t mind owning one of his walnut flutes and i’ve always wanted to try one of his cherry flutes, but i’d stay away from the others (unless i could try them first).
dunnp’s Eb flute rocks, and i think he got that one for almost nothing…
good luck. 
cheers,
eric
My Eb does indeed rock. It was a prototype and has a bit of extra length glued on to the bottom as the first run was too short. It also defies everything I know about flutes. It’s made of a relatively porous seeming wood with non tight grain and has a tiny non undercut embouchre and yet is very loud and responsive. Makes me think all we know about flutes and woods or think we know is a bit of a guess really. One thing I don’t like about it is the grain of the wood Paduk {?} catches my beard and pulls it. I bought an F and G in cherry that same day and they were great as well. I tried all the flutes he laid out blackwood, rosewood etc. and liked them all. His eight key Firth and Pond type blackwood was great.
I think wood choice has much less to do with sound than design and embouchre cut but woods do behave differently with moisture absorption. Blackwood seems more stable while my boxwood and cocus flutes change. For example my boxwood flutes and cocus flutes need to swell at the joints and be wet to be sound their best. So comparing an unwet boxwood to a blackwood is simply not fair.
Maple will be fine like box it plays much better wet and less risk of a crack as more brittle woods but thats just my experience.
Good luck with your new flute and Ralph is a great guys and always helpful he’s done some repairs and always gets my flutes back to playing shape for a lot less than anyone else would charge me. Cheers, Pat
I’ve said this before, but I think there is a lot of variability in all of the Sweetheart instruments, due to the many design changes they’ve made over the years. Again — you can get a gem, but it’s always risky to buy without first taking it out for a spin.
That said, I’d feel very confident about having a custom instrument made up for me by Ralph and Walt these days. They’ll make sure you’re satisfied.
He said that maple is a porous wood. It can potentially leak air and therefore ruin an octave so they use “tuning oil” to seal it and when a flute is properly oiled it doesn’t matter whether the wood is porous or smooth. He said it’s the oil the Chinese used for their ships to protect them from rot, but I bet it’s just a regular almond oil or something alike.
That’s what the man said: “maple is easier to control and get the best sound out of. Moreover, it’s harder”
No, maple is quite a ways down on the hardness scale, which is why most makers don’t use it.
http://www.tinytimbers.com/janka.htm
Treating it as the Sweets do may take care of any issues, but I’d go for a harder wood myself.
There is a difference between drying oils like linseed (flax seed), tung, walnut, etc and Olive oil. From their website they say they use tung oil.
Sweetheart Flute
Our wooden instruments undergo a painstaking process that takes the better part of a week. They are soaked in diluted tung oil for two hours, let dry overnight, soaked again, let dry two days, then given two coats of finish tung oil before final drying. Blackwood has natural oils and these instruments require fewer coats. In nature, many of the North American hardwoods are rather porous, but this tung oil treatment seals them for proper performance. Moisture is also repelled by tung oil, better than by linseed oil, for example.