I have GL’s Essential Flute/Whistle book. In the book, there are some pictures of his Firth Pond flute with headjoint by Chris Abell. Can anyone confirm for me that the headjoint has a fan-shaped cut-away above the embouchure hole? And does anyone know how it changes the sound from the original headjoint - which I assume was without the cutaway?
I can answer that - Grey brought both heads with him for our initial collaboration - see http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Grey.htm.
The original head to Grey’s Firth and Pond had an enormous split through the embouchure - the usual problem, wood shrinking and metal not. (Interesting that that happened even with a US-made flute, but I imagine that the advent of central heating was the issue here.) So Grey had asked Chris Abel to make a new head some time previously. Chris stuck pretty close to the significant dimensions of the original head, except for adding the cut-away. Unfortunately, with the original head in such poor condition, it’s unrealistic and unfair to do any direct comparison between them.
However, the question of cutaways was one of the things on my agenda for our more recent collaboration, Easter this year (not yet written up). We took two of the heads I routinely make for my Grey Larsen Preferred models, but only one flute body, in order to minimise other variables. One head was left “normal” and the other given a mild cutaway. We both agreed that the cutaway head was better, so out with the chainsaw for an agressive cutaway. (OK, it wasn’t a chainsaw, the stump grinder is a much better tool.) With the extremely agressive cutaway we found that the easyness of playing was improved substantially, but the amount of wind noise and sizzle detracted from the tone too much. Some fine tuning to the edge under the microscope was able to eliminate that while retaining the benefits.
Time rather ran out at that point (we had quite a few other issues on the agenda to investigate and we were already pretty tired), but Grey has taken away that head to interrogate further, I have fitted one to my flute and I have made another which one of the local players is currently evaluating.
My feeling is that it frees up the response further throughout the range, making the flute easier to play and fuller sounding (nice to have both!). “More chocolate” was my local colleague’s partner’s initial response. But I need to do more work on it and get more people to comment before coming to firm conclusions. I suspect there will be issues relating to blowing angle and possible relating to the degree of undercutting of the embouchure that need to be taken into account too. I suspect that we are looking at an aerodynamic issue, and that we may need to empoy such investigative techniques (eg. smoke and lasers) to pin down exactly what’s happening here.
In the light of those initial responses though, it’s probably easy to see why Chris incorporated the cutaway on the replacement head for Grey’s flute. The original head had a very large diameter - about 29mm (compared to the usual 27mm of English flutes) and Chris has replicated this at the embouchure on the new head (thinning a little to each end of the head probably to save weight). This gives a deep embouchure chimney (5mm compared to the usual 4) which gives a nice depth of tone but can be a bit stodgy in performance. Chris, who also makes heads for Boehm flutes, would be aware that the front part of the lip plate of the metal flute falls away much faster than if it were part of a 29mm diameter cylinder - ie the Boehm flute essentially has a cutaway. So if you are going to have such a deep chimney and therefore such a large outside diameter, a cutaway should help considerably to restore livelyness of performance.
When I started making the Grey Larsen Preferred model, I retained the depth of chimney, but used my “Eccentric Bore” concept to bring the outer diameter back down to 27mm. This also improves the livelyness, and possibly for some of the same reasons, so a cutaway didn’t seem to be as immediately important as optimising the internal features of the hole and other aspects of the flute. But with everything else now to my satisfaction, definitely worth investigating further.
Interesting to note that I’ve never seen a 19th century flute with a cutaway or anything like it. I got excited when I noticed that the Boehm ring-key in the Dayton C Miller collection logo appeared to have one. Then I noticed the G# key was on the wrong side. The photo had been inadvertantly reversed (they’ve changed the logo since)! What appeared to be a cutaway turned out to be a depression for the lower lip - Boehm was obviously in favour of the “blow low and across mode” rather than the “get on top of it and blow down mode” used by Irish musicians.
I’d be interested in hearing from other makers or players who have tried with and without as to what they consider the benefits and drawbacks of cutaways are.
Terry
“My feeling is that it frees up the response further throughout the range, making the flute easier to play and fuller sounding (nice to have both!).”
Terry, thanks for that very informative reply. I find that the sound of many wood flutes is a bit soft for my tastes. Does the cutaway give the sound more definition than without?
And do you think that a cutaway helps with the upper octaves?
Will you be able to offer a cutaway on your other models?