If you had to choose between short and long F, and could only get one, which would it be and why?
I prefer short F - less chance to damage the key compared to a long one and I’ve found I can do pretty much anything I want with the short F (you can roll your finger with practice for some of the more difficult passages where folks normally use the long F).
My guess is most folks will say long, but didn’t Nicholson prefer the short F…which would put me in pretty good company.
Eric
i suppose it’s personal preference, but I find the long f natural to provide better stability in playing especially when quick transitions are required…
My pinky finger is too short to reliably hit the long F…
Practise, and a slightly longer touch would do it… but still, I vote short
My vote’s for the long F; it’s really the only one I use. I guess I just haven’t ran into an instance where the short key would be easier to use than the long one.
Oooh! I have BOTH!
Clueless about what to do with either of them . . . 
Absolutely, positively the long F. Try going directly from D to F natural without it…
I use my short F key from time to time, but mostly just to remind myself that it’s there.
they are there to make the flute look cool. 
That’s why I wanted them . . . that and four more . . . 
Dudette/Dude ~ I think my keyless flutes look “cool” !
I vote for “no” F-key…
M
Now I am used to them, I definitely need both. If I would have to sacrifice one key, it would be the Cnat: I have a vintage flute with the Cnat broken and the hole plugged, and I discovered I didn’t really need it. But all my friends with keyed flutes tell me it’s their favorite key.
Hard to tell what is best for you… 
And it’s true the long F looks cool.
I use the short F most of the time, but as someone pointed out above, there’s no way to go cleanly from D to F or F to D without the long F natural key. That’s primarily what it’s there for, but some people prefer to use it for every instance of F.
If you only could have one, the long F is the one to get – if you get a short F only, you’ll have trouble everytime you try to go from F to D or vice versa.
For Irish music, I actually think the long F is more useful. My reasoning is with a short F you can easily do most intervals except F-nat to D, which is found with some frequency in tunes like Julia Delaney’s and the Sunset.
The long F can do the F-nat to D easily.
The interval the long F can’t do is F-nat to A-flat–you have to have a short F for that.
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any dance tunes that include that interval. There probably are some; I just don’t think I play any.
All of that said, I find I use the short F quite a bit more than the long F. About the only time I use the long F is if there is one of those F-nat to D passages.
–James
P.S. Brad, I didn’t mean to step on your post–we must have been typing our answers at the same time. --James
Fnat to D with a short F isn’t that hard if you think of it as a slide off the Fnat key. D to Fnat is a slide onto the key.
Then again, maybe I just have freaky fingers… 
Eric
I can do the slide off of the key on any of my flutes pretty well.
The slide onto the key, though–that I can’t quite make work on any of them. Then again, my flutes have long-F keys, so I’ve not spent a lot of time trying.
If you really wanna impress me, play this figure from Eileen Curran at speed with only the short F:
K: Gmin
AFcFdFcF
That rocking pedal is hard enough to do with the long F!
–James
James - that would be a chore! The long F would make it easier, but I’d probably just be a slug and half hole the Fnats… 
Since we’re up to speed, who’d notice?
Eric
I’ve had a b*** of a time adjusting to the long F, but “The Girl That Broke My Heart” pretty much convinced me.
Put me in the long F camp … I use the short F on like, one tune because I learned it that way. Instead, I’ll generally half-hole or cross-finger, esp. at speed.
I love that tune but learned it in D. Really easy to play that way.
If it weren’t for the d@mn fiddles we wouldn;t need to wory about keyed flutes.
, and amen!
In my case, it was even worse … my hopes for a D go at it were shattered by an accordion. But you’re right. It is a great tune.
(Now if I could just migrate The Moving Cloud from G to F … but maybe by the time I’m 100!)
I always used to just use the short F - and found the long F really difficult. But the short F can be easily damaged, if it gets twisted it just doesn’t close after use which has happened to one of my flutes.
So I’ve been forced to use the long F, and I really like it now - much better, much more stable and there are very very few situations when it’s difficult - really only when going from the fnat to g# (aflat), and how often does that happen?