Hi Folks,
It’s been awhile since I’ve been on the boards. I’m a long-time dabbler with no budget to speak of. Through various career changes over the last decade I’ve kept my hand in the game, and am feeling quite comfortable with my low and high whistles. I’m a little less successful with the Hall Crystal flute that I was given, but it is rewarding enough for me to want to do more.
A local chap is selling an unused McNeela Cygnet for $250CDN.
A quick internet search shows a couple of things: The McNeela reputation is spotty, with a few overly-effusive reviews mixed among the more critical posts. The other thing I’ve found is that virtually EVERY flute related search turns up a McNeela ad. Google, YouTube, whatever - It’s McNeela here, there and everywhere.I can’t imagine what they must be paying for marketing. Whatever it may be, it makes me extra cautious of lending my trust.
My question: Is there a flute out there that would be a better use of my meagre $250CDN? I know that nothing comes for free, but sometimes bargains do fall from the sky.
Any hints on where to look besides the omnipresent McN***** would be greatly appreciated.
I’d look at an Essential flute from Geoffrey Ellis. It is cylindrical bore with a tapered head, rather than a conventional cylindrical head with tapered body, but they play very well and are very well in tune. It is difficult to find anything that competes with them at that price range.
You can learn more about them here on this video by Blayne Chastain of the Irish Flute Store
If you can find a flute player who can check out that McNeela, than that may be your best bet at the price. Otherwise, maybe a Doug Tipple cylindrical. It probably doesn’t help that most purchases would likely require import to Canada & any associated customs fees, delivery & taxes.
The seller of the Cygnet is located about an hour away, so I will likely give it a try. I’m just wary of the whiff of snake oil I get from the Mcneela marketing.
I’m in the UK, and I find exactly the same thing. Even on a search with a maker’s name in double quotes, I still have to wade through the McNeela ads.
I get the impression most of their own-brand instruments are factory made in China and south Asia. That doesn’t mean they’re poor quality, of course, but it does make me wonder if I might find a hand finished one for a similar price secondhand. Specially if I’m willing to wait for it to come up for sale.
I have a couple students who have that McNeela flute. They are… fine. There are a number of flutes I would much rather have as a beginner, but at that price point things get a little more difficult. If you test it out and like it, that’s not a terrible price for it and it would be a fine enough starter instrument. But be sure you like it and it sounds like it’s roughly in tune before buying; they’re mass-produced instruments (note that a lot of his instruments say things like “hand-finished” rather than “handmade”) that have a less-than-stellar QC process.
If a Tony Dixon 3 piece flute is available around you, especially used, that would be in your price range and IMO better than the McNeela. NOT the one or two piece polymer ones that are around $100 or the “flute and whistle head” three piece set, the three piece Irish flute, which is modeled more after a “normal” Irish flute. The one and two piece are completely different and IMO not worth it.
A Ralph Sweet Maple flute would also be in your price range and, for the money, are decent. Again, that would be the used market, I’ve seen them come up fairly cheap.
The best option IMO would be if you could get your hands on a used WD Sweet (son of Ralph) “Shannon” flute. It’s what I started on and I’ve seen them come up for that amount of money used. I don’t think he make that model anymore, but it was an excellent beginner’s flute and well worth the money.
There’s an outside chance that a Copley (delrin without rings), M&E, or Thompson student model flute comes up used in that price range. If you see any of those, jump on it, they’re also well worth it.
My reservation about the Ellis, which I owned, is that I couldn’t make the rt hand stretch. Concern is that I have largish hands and often play Prattens.
The increased right hand finger stretch is a common characteristic of flutes based on a cylindrical body bore and tapered head design. It is not a peculiarity of Ellis flutes per se, just the Essential flute design which has the cylindrical body.
In contrast, a tapered body design shortens the reach a bit, but it also gives the maker the opportunity to introduce perturbations in the body bore profile which can be used to improve ergonomics further.
Yes, this is an issue for some players, but as paddler says it’s a cylindrical bore feature. I was inspired to create the Essential Flute line because I loved a particular Olwell bamboo flute that I have. I wanted to make a wooden version (since sourcing bamboo is damn tricky unless you live in Florida , and while the finger spread is pretty much identical to the Olwell it is more than most conical bore flutes in the same key.
It’s possible that comfort would be impacted by the overall reach. Meaning, while the spacing of the finger holes themselves are very close to the Olwell, the finger holes as a group (meaning all of the finger holes on the Essential Flute) are a good 10mm farther down the bore from the embouchure hole compared to the Olwell, and that can certainly make a difference.
That’s an interesting creation, though he does say it’s a one-off. I’d be very curious to know how it plays/sounds. It does hark back to an earlier discussion about the Fajardo wedge concept:
But in that thread we were discussing end blown flutes/whistles.
I’ve never had an opportunity to try any flutes from fellow makers (such as Doug Tipple) who have managed to implement a wedge into their design, so I can only speculate about how the flute behaves. I’m not a huge fan of the wedge for this sort of flute, but it is quite possible that when one gets the proportions just right it works like a charm. I did quite a lot of experimenting and never cordially loved them, but I can’t deny that they balanced the tuning and they are way better than nothing at all!
But given the pain-in-the-neck factor in making tapered reamers (for wood) or shaping metal into a taper (using whatever method–mandrels, hydraulic press, etc.), the wedge approach has a lot to recommend it.
Plus I think the asking price is quite modest if the flute performs well. Even using prefabricated aluminum tubing, there is plenty of custom work done on that, including the creation of the wedge insert itself. Hopefully someone on C&F will buy it and report back!
Mickie Zekley (of fond memory) was an excellent fluteplayer and played an incredibly ornate (and heavy) mid-19th century Pratten flute.
It was an amazing-sounding great-playing flute, and Mickie told me at one point that he had put a “wedge” in it, which made it play even better.
At the time I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I later found out about the Fajardo Wedge, which did look like the doohickey he had inside his headjoint.
I think it is worth noting that cane / bamboo flutes are not really cylindrical body flutes. The actual bore in a piece of bamboo generally has some kind of taper, either in the head or the body or both. And the exact nature of that taper varies from one piece of bamboo to the next. So no two bamboo flutes are the same, even from the same maker. The tone hole spacing will depend on the bore profile.
When you have a precisely cylindrical body, that determines the tone hole spacing. You can see the extra right hand finger stretch on that aluminum flute pancelticpiper listed, and the same spacing occurs on low D whistles.
I’ve use wedges in the head of cylindrical head and body flutes to try to stretch the octaves, but it doesn’t work as well as having a parabolic head profile or reaming the head. The wedges tend to interfere with the smooth flow of air and eat up a bit of tone.
Do keep an eye out on Ebay and other online markets. I was lucky enough to get a Keyless Damian Thompson Delrin Student Flute within your price bracket (just) - it is a fantastic hand-made flute and a joy to learn on. It might be worth waiting / saving for a good second hand flute - it is a challenging learning experience but hugely rewarding - probably very frustrating with a difficult to play poorly manufactured flute. Good luck in your search. If you don’t already play the whistle, it might be well worth getting one to keep you going while searching for a good learning flute.
Right, I’ve played Kena/Quena for years and the cane they use narrows as it approaches the node.
Kenas have the node at the bottom (they drill a hole through the node for the bellnote) so they taper like an “Irish” flute does. It’s probably why they have good octaves.
Then you could turn it around, having the node be the “cork”, in which case it would work sort of like a Boehm flute, with the head portion narrowing as it approaches the “cork”.
I used to have a great-playing Olwell cane flute in E (natural) and as I recall it was like that.
Yes, bamboo can be (as paddler pointed out), very complex. I sacrificed a number of nice pieces of bamboo (bambusa multiplex silverstripe, the same stuff Pat used on his flutes), in order to come to grips with the bore anatomy. I bisected them lengthwise (very difficult to do accurately, since if you deviate in your cut it tweaks the measurable diameter) and measured the bore tapers, and I did this on three different pieces that looked promising. I did indeed find a double taper in each one of them, though extremely subtle. Near one of the nodes, there is a more substantial (sudden) taper like on a Boehm flute, but not the same dimensions as a Boehm taper. Neither as long nor as radical–shorter and more subtle. This taper evens out in a section of variable length where the bore seems to be cylindrical and then it starts to taper very slowly toward the next node at the foot. A “conical” bore, if you will, but very sublime. A Pratten flute (for example) has a taper that drops from about 19mm down to about 12mm (give or take a bit in each instance). The taper in the body of the bamboo flute might go from 19mm down to maybe 18.5mm over the same distance–so that’s very nuanced. And of course all of these tapers are quite variable from piece to piece. This explains why bamboo selection is so difficult. You can neither see nor measure the inside of the bamboo when it presents this way. If you insert a t-gauge up the bore to take a reading, you can’t get it back out again due to the constriction approaching the foot of the flute. So it takes a lot of practice to eyeball it and select a piece that looks promising.
Pat said that in the past, out of every ten bamboo flutes he made maybe half were acceptable and one or two exceptional. I believe there are a fair number of anonymous bamboo flutes out there that were made by Pat, but he only stamped his name on the good ones (quite sensible in my view). Personally, I’m inclined to try to correct those odds and I’m experimenting with various methods of bore manipulation like the makers of shakuhachi in Japan practice. Otherwise you throw away a lot of very nice bamboo.
But I digress–I don’t mean to hijack the thread away from the original question. While this aspect of bamboo flute making is relevant to my Essential Flutes (which were suggested), it’s not really relevant to the McNeela flutes.
, and while the finger spread is pretty much identical to the Olwell it is more than most conical bore flutes in the same key.