I had the fortunate opportunity to evaluate many Boehm flute headjoints made by some of the top makers of professional hand made flutes. No two same make and model headjoint, even if made by the same person, sound and respond the same. So, top makers have a liberal trial and exchange policy for headjoints.
I think it should be easier to duplicate a metal headjoint and flute for that matter, than to duplicate a wooden headjoint and flute. By duplicate I mean to make the same model/material flute have the same timbre and responsiveness.
There is a long wait for a top maker wooden flute, and it’s hard for the same player to have several at hand to compare. So, typically we accept what’s delivered and are very pleased.
Each of us has a different embouchure, style, and proficiency. So, in comparing two superb flutes, different players may make different choices. In this case it’s not flute, but player variablility.
What is your experiece in variability of top maker, same model and type of wood headjoints and flutes, that should be “identical”?
Bill
[ This Message was edited by: SuiZen on 2003-01-19 07:46 ]
But wooden clarinets, which I have a lot of experience with, are hugely variable. The same maker, the same materials, right down to the same batch of wood, will create some that are absolutely spectacular, and some that are awful.
Wood is tricky stuff. The exact shape and set of the grain, and the intricacies of its structure make different pieces of wood, even when turned into exactly the same shape, have drastically different sound qualities.
Perhaps one of the reasons the very top makers gain such a high reputation is the strictness of their quality control.
Although I do not know this for fact, I would imagine that makers like Hamilton and Olwell (and others just as worthy) make flutes in batches, and out of each batch, there are probably one or two that just don’t make the grade, and as such, never make it out of the workshop door.
I suspect you’re right, James, though the better the maker, the less they probably produce sub-standard work. They are, generally, slower in producing flutes than makers often criticized for quality fluctuations.
Mark’s right, too – even among the top makers, there’s a slight (and this is a crucial slight) difference from flute to flute because of the nature of the wood and the fact that every step is done by hand (embouchure cut, bore, etc). Even so, I’ve never played a flute by any of the top makers that weren’t top-notch flutes, but there is a slight variance between their models that make each a bit unique, sometimes creating a “love at first play” , sometimes a less comfortable “we’ll have to get to know each other a bit”. Like love, though, sometimes the latter is the one that lasts.
I wonder sometimes if half to most, if not all, of flute break-in is just the getting-used-to it part. I mean from the player’s perspective, not the ramping-up-of-playing-time stuff to get the wood used to moist wind.
From the top guys, I will definitely agree that their work is consistently excellent. But of course there’s some variation. No two Olwells are identical. I will say that I think it takes an accomplished player to tell the difference between two Olwells, though; I don’t know if the subtle differences in embouchure cut (for example) would mean anything to a young emouchure. And I mean coparing O-Prattens to O-Prattens and O-Nicholsons to O-Nicholsons, not Prattens to Nicholsons.
That sounds right, as well, Stuart. Getting used to a flute is a big part of your eventual relationship with it; I think this is a bit of the “easy/hard” flute controversy a few threads back, that raged for pages. Once mastered, most flutes are “easy”, the payback for the work being something akin to a mutual understanding between the player and the flute.
The differences between two flutes by the same maker (assuming that, as you say, they’re two of the same style, virtually identical) will probably not warrant the same break-in time for the player, if he/she is already used to one, and a newer player will probably not feel or hear any difference at all. And the differences, great or greater, with the better makers, are usually subjective at that point in any case.
Gordon