So the difference between a two piece and three piece (keyless) Healy is purely aesthetic?
I have a Hoza 5 key, probably the only one in existence. I wouldn’t say he isn’t one of the big shots. Tried a Hammy and Grinter. and the Hoza was in the same league.No offence of course to Hammy and Grinter. My FLOA(?) stopped with the Hoza acquisition.
Tots
Tots Tolentino! Good to see you around here. I had your keyed M&E for a while, but eventually i had to sell it to make money to buy another flute. I agree, Mark makes great flutes. Unfortunately he isn’t cheap either, but the flutes are gorgeous and sound great. And he’s the nicest guy, he’ll goes out of his way to help you get a good instrument.
I theorize that the reasons flute makers make multiple-piece flutes are as follows:
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It’s easy to find short, good pieces of wood
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If you screw something up you only have to pitch 1/5 of your work.
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It’s kind of a pain to work with a real long reamer.
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It’s easier to upgrade a 5-piece to a keyed flute because you only need to replace the mid-section (as does Hammy).
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They really get a charge out of making tenon joints
OK, so I’m not so sure about that last one :roll:
It would be nice if someone who actually makes flutes could chime in and enlighten us. 
I believe the reason Skip gives on his website for a more-piece is reason #4 above.
Doc
Actually, I bought my Hoza on a “how much flute can I get for how little money” experiment. I got his absolute cheapest model. It was $365 with a case and shipping from Australia. I’ve been extremely happy with the fluteness per dollar ratio.
To describe it a little more for Doc:
It’s a large hole, large bore style made from Cooktown Ironwood. The wood is kind of a cinnamon brown with a wavy white grain pattern. It is a two piece flute, with no tuning slide or metal rings. The single joint is thread wrapped. The headjoint is turned with something of a bulge around the socket since there is no metal to strengthen it, the foot and head ends are also rounded making the whole shape more soft and curvy rather than hard and angular. The wood is dense, and the flute is not light. There is obvious hand work on the embouchure hole and the tone holes (overcutting on all).
The finger spread is not difficult for me at all. The right hand holes are placed in a slight arc, making them very easy to reach. (I don’t have small hands, but not huge either). I have little problem going back and forth from this to a Bohm flute.
It’s hard to describe the sound, and of course it depends so much on the player. I’m not really an Irish musician. I do play Irish music occasionally, but I use this flute more for Japanese tunes or improvisation, often in the Japanese, or native american scales. I’ve started pollishing up a few Christmas songs recently. I’ve been playing flute for a little less than four years. I take lessons on the Bohm flute and probably play that about 10 times what I play a wooden flute.
I can play fairly loud, but not as loud as on my Yamaha. The sound is mellower than I get from silver. I can get a nice focused sound, or play it more open. If I try, I can sometimes get a reedy sound, but that’s not normally what I want. It plays pretty well in tune. First C-nat seems best fingered 0xx x00. If I recall correctly, the high C-nat is only really there with 0xx xx0. Either 0xx 000 or xxx 000 is OK for the high D. The low end is plenty strong, but I haven’t gotten (or tried!) much above the D above the staff.
I’m happy with the thing. Having never played an Olwell, Hamilton, or other “famous maker”, I can’t give much of a comparrison…
All of your reasons are pretty much on the money Doc, the other reason is that people are making historic reproductions flaws & all. The old 5 piece flutes were made for a time when A wasn’t defined as A=440 & flutists were expected to fudge around with several barrel joints & other contraptions to make one flute play everything from A=415 to 450.
Anyway, with more tenons there’s more chances for air to leak & those tenons disrupt the bore.
As for the Skip question - The main difference between Skip’s 2 piece & the 3 piece is that a three piece can be keyed up easier down the road. In fact I doubt we key 2 piece flutes.
PM with any questions if you want
Don’t totally discount the ergonomic issues of making a flute with joints. Ergonomic in the sense of wanting to rotate the toneholes one way or another. . . you don’t have to search very long in the annals of C&F to find discussions of how people have switched to the split-middle R&R style flute to bring the bottom tone holes into more optimal position. Most makers will do either design (head-body-foot, head-tophand-bottomhand-foot) for “either design” (Pratten, Rudall, whatever). Same can be said for key position . . . though I know that one of the motivations behind the long-body Pratten style is pinblock placement.
Though, I know first hand that timber is also an issue. I have a boxwood flute on order, and the maker asked me specifically if I was OK with a single middle section because he’d found a particularly nice long piece of boxwood.
Stuart
Good point Stuart.
Fortunately I was blessed with long fingers.
Doc
I’m not a maker, but wish one would chime in, as this thread has gone to two pages with lots of opinions and very little fact.
That said, here’s my take, based on listening to makers and playing flutes for some time.
While the embouchure cut is by far the most important part of a flute sound, there are also inside bore requirements, which would be more accessible to the maker in shorter segments to possibly fine-tune the overall sound, intonation, etc.. Some makers (Wilkes, I believe) chamber their flutes, or claim to, which means, apparently, that there are subtle variations inside the bore, as opposed to one long ream down to the end. There are also those that feel the end piece, on a Pratten, say, while not critical for tone, contributes somewhat, which is why there are often short and long foot segments offered, even without keys. Stuart’s mention of shifting hand position is a good one, obviously not applicable to the Pratten one-middle piece style, but still, the middle piece is far shorter than one continuing into the foot joint.
For your basic keyless Irish playing, I think there is probably very little reason why a one-piece can’t be as good as a multiple piece keyless flute, but in my experience, all the ones I’ve tried (not many, I’ll admit, and often a lesser make, like Sweet) have been inferior to the three or four piece flutes. Skip stops short from saying, specifically, that there are NO differences between his two piece and his more professional models other than the number of parts. I’ve played both, and the two piece was quite nice, but it did not sound as good as his three piece. More attention to quality, or some actual differences in his ability to control tone and intonation, I don’t know and can’t say. Few makers make a two piece, which either speaks for itself, or only speaks to what their customers want and expect, or only what the makers prefer to make. But to make the assumption that they only do what they do because it’s more traditional, flaws and all, is nonsense; very few makers would ignore an easier and more effective way of making flutes if it was doable.
Mark Hoza’s flutes have been spoken very highly of, both his two and three piece flutes. I’ve never played his flutes, so I can’t say which (of his offered flutes) sound better, or if there’s a difference, sonically speaking, between them.
The lower price of a two-piece flutes may speak to two separate (ironically) issues; it’s cheaper to make one or two less tenons, and/or the quality may suffer by jumping this step. I suspect it’s a bit of both; more often than not, two piece flutes skip the tuning slide as well; not a problem, really, but it shows a certain lower-budget attitude on the part of the maker, the flute(s) often touted as “good beginner” flutes.
If a maker put his/her full attention into a quality two piece, could it rival a similar quality three or four piece flute? Probably, but I’d be interested, for eg, in opinions on the 3rd octave, and other tonal considerations from either makers and/or players more experienced in these flutes than anyone who seems to be contributing to this thread.
No offence intended to anyone; just seems to be a lot of unsubstantiated support for something no one seems to know much about.
Gordon
I think that when a maker sets out to make a certain model, he looks for the best sample available, take measurements, and makes reamers. The idea is to make a flute very similar to the original, with few “tweaking”. This research and tooling takes
much time. To make a keyless version, one would use the same reamers, and the bore remains true to the original.
So much goes into the head joint and embouchure cut, while the tenons are easy to do. In fact many makers will do a Pratten type bore in two body parts with no extra charge.
I think that it’s just not the market niche that some of the “high end” makers aim for,
so they do not invest in the tooling, making a whole separate set of reamers, only to make the same model flute but in one piece.
I could be way off, but I know that when I was making one piece Renaissance flutes, the tooling was so much different, there the bore is cylindrical and you do not need to cut a long tapered reamer, and chuck it on the milling machine to cut a flute (a flute in the reamer is the cutting edge for the bit to cut into wood) in it, I know that none of my two milling machines could cut a flute in a tapered reamer that long.
Hope it was wise to write before having my morning coffee 
One more thing. Turning a long thin piece presents vibration which requires you to do more of the finish work sanding rather the cutting with turning tools.
I think those are good points, eilam; the reamers and modelling a flute after a (successful) earlier flute. It’s the latter that made me think and write what I did. Early on, after the one-piece cylindrical flutes, I suspect it was easier to do conical boring in separate pieces, re both reamers and good wood at the proper length, but this continued well into a time when it was possible to bore a conical flute, so the decision to continue to make conical flutes in four or three pieces must have been many, beyond these logistical problems.
For example, the footjoint of most (if not all) three or four joint conical flutes reverses the bore (going out, rather than in in a slight flare). I suppose this can be re-reamed on the other side, but I’ll bet the makers feel they have more control over each section (more control meaning being able properly tune the flute on all holes, undercutting, etc.) if the six holes and foot joint are not all in one long bore. This would, of course, be less of a problem with something smaller, an F flute or a fife, but I can imagine the problems one might find trying to undercut a hole in a D flute, particularly around the F and E holes with a full-sized flute.
For those makers that have achieved this, though, I wonder how well they feel they’ve properly set the intonation on the upper octaves, and how they compare to flutes by the same maker when broken into parts. I’ve yet to see a one-piece flute not referred to by a maker as being “for a beginner or intermediate player”, though many refer to their keyless flutes in the same way, so perhaps it has more to do with players’ limitations than the flutes.
Hmmm…
Gordon, who had his coffee, several times already, but it doesn’t see to help anymore…
Searching the archive I found the following comments by Skip Healy about his flutes. Ironically he was answering a question asked by me (how soon we forget :roll: ).
Anyway, here’s the quote:
"Hi everybody,
Patrick & Jim, I’m sorry for the delay in responding to your questions. Here’s a bit more information.
On the now-discontinued two piece model, the length, bore, tone hole sizes, and spacings were the same as on the three-piece flute. The embouchure hole was two-thirds the size of the fully cut embouchure. The idea behind this is that after the student developed basic embouchure control, the hole could be enlarged to accomodate more air.
The current two-piece flute is offered in blackwood, Cooktown ironwood, and Bois de Rose with a silver tenon (soon to be listed on my Web site). I feel that this is a far superior design compared to my earlier effort.
The biggest difference between a three-piece flute (headjoint, body, and footjoint) and a two-piece flute (headjoint and body) is the ability for the player to rotate the footjoint to a position they find comfortable if it is a keyed footjoint. It is indeed possible to fully key a two-piece flute. I would just need to confirm the exact rotation of the D sharp touch piece for the maximum comfort of my client.
I agree that the fewer joints (or tenons) there are in an instrument, the better.
Jim, you can certainly visit me at my shop or contact me at skip@skiphealy.com with any questions you may have.
All the best,
Skip Healy
Healy Flute Company "
Thanks again Skip,
Doc
Hi there
I’ve got a two-piece flute made by Fred Rose, with tuning slide, and tried one without slide before buying.
It’s a very, very, VERY good instrument. I bought it 2 years ago and it seems to be a new instrument: The aspect is amazing (it’s mopane) and the sound is great, even if I’m a poor player.
Philippe
Thanks Phillipe, I didn’t realize Fred made flutes.
Doc
I don’t mean to be the spoiler on this topic (although it does spice things up!), as I see no technical reason why a two-piece can’t sound as good as a three or four piece, and I have no wide-spread experience that says they can’t or don’t. I still would like to hear from a maker or two on this topic.
As I said earlier, I have tried both Skip’s two piece and three piece; the three piece - for whatever reason - sounded better and played better. In Skip’s letter to Doc, he says that “The biggest difference between a three-piece flute (headjoint, body, and footjoint) and a two-piece flute (headjoint and body) is the ability for the player to rotate the footjoint to a position they find comfortable if it is a keyed footjoint.” Skip is nothing, if not a great salesman. The sticking point, of course, is his use of his word “biggest”. It implies there is at least one or two other differences, and that may be the basis for the fact that he sells the 2 piece as a beginner and intermediate flute, and his keyless three piece as the basis for his professional model, especially when he goes on to say he could just as well key the 2 piece.
BTW, I don’t mean to say that his two piece flute isn’t very, very nice, which it is; it’s better than some three and four piece flutes by other makers that I’ve tried, and I’m not a huge fan of his flutes in general; we are not even talking a huge difference between the two models he offers. But there seemed a difference, nonetheless, and I wondered aloud (as any good Tull fan would) if there was simply more attention paid (and there should be, frankly, considering the price differential) to his more professional three piece model.
However, even Skip’s regular flutes are a bit, hmm, different from other flutes, a matter of taste and all. So I don’t know what would happen if a maker like Hammy or Olwell, McGee or whomever, started cranking out somewhat more traditional flutes with one-piece attached foot joints. Most old German flutes, while having a tenon split between the 6 holes like a Rudall, have a one-piece right-hand/foot combination, which usually results in a weak and often badly tuned low end. This has to do with the German flute basic design, as well, so I’m not putting it all on the one-tailpiece construction.
Regarding Fred’s flute “sounding good” (which it very well may), sounding good is a relative term; I knocked Sweet’s flutes earlier as coming from a “lesser maker,” but Ralph has made some nice sounding flutes, both two and three piece, particularly if you aren’t too fussy and/or aren’t a very advanced player. Sometimes these things don’t have to coincide, as some very good players don’t demand too much. Others need their flutes to respond in certain ways when pushed to extremes, when used in all three octaves, etc. Beginners don’t often understand, then, why their “good” sounding flute is not considered a great flute, even when they try a supposedly great flute and it sounds about the same, or, worse, they can’t get it to sound as good as their flute. It, of course, has to do with the player, and not just the flute, and what the flute can do for the player as his/her technique improves.
Whether makers that omit the bottom one or two tenons are also skimping on the fine-tuning involved in making a great flute, I can’t say; I suppose it’s also a matter of what they’re after in the first place. I think Skip is right, that theoretically, the less tenons, the less potential problems (I think he just said the better, but…), but I still maintain that if there were an easy way to make a two-piece flute of the same quality a good maker (and player) demands, there’d be more two piece flutes of quality out there.
I’m just not seeing them.
Gordon
Well I went straight to the source.
Called Skip Healy today and he assured me that the Two-piece and three-piece are pre-xactly the same in bore, tone holes, embouchre, TLC and everything else that matters. He also said that in his hands there is not more difference in sound than one would expect as normal variation from one flute to another of the same model.
The cost difference is strictly a matter of fewer tenons and less silver. The advantage of the three-piece is ease of later keying.
What a great guy to talk to!
I also spoke to Pat Olwell today, and to answer some of the above hypotheses as to “why he doesn’t make a two-piece flute if they’re so dang great?”,
His reply…“my lathe is too short”.
I’m thinking of buying a Healy and getting on a list with Pat (even if he does have a short lathe 
).
Cheers,
Doc
I also heard from an informed source on Healy flutes who assures me that the bores in Skip’s flutes, whether 2 or 3 piece, are identically made, so that is reassuring. As I said earlier, I was not sure that it can not be done (2 pc.), but that I was skeptical.
My feeling that the Healy 2 pc. was a tad weaker than the 3 may have two obvious explanations, having nothing to do with the number of pieces. The first, of course, is that all flutes are a tad different, and I only tried one of his 2 piece flutes, in contrast with 3 or so of his regular flutes. One flute is not a conclusive argument, IMO, and I didn’t spend all that much time with it in any case. As said earlier, even this flute, like all of Skip’s flutes, was of high quality, so my feeling about the 2 pc. against his 3 piece was hardly damning.
The second is, again from the same informed source, that early on, Skip experimented with an easier embouchure cut, a bit smaller in size, on these “beginner/intermediate” models, and that may be what I found lacking in the flute I tried. In fact, he may now no longer make the two piece with anything other, or less, than his regular embouchure cut.
Again, all my comments have been academic; I think it would be wonderful to have a 2 piece flute, a bit less expensive, that compares favorably to the more compactible 3 and 4 piece flutes. I have yet to play one, and still question, though less so now, the bandwagon everyone seemed to have jumped on in endorsing the single-body idea.
BTW, Doc, I agree completely; Skip is an extremely nice guy, and any questions anyone has about his flutes should well feel comfortable contacting him directly.
All the best,
Gordon
Skip said he offers two embouchre cuts, one smaller for less experienced/powerful players and the other larger. He said he’d ship out both headjoints to compare.
Incidently, in perusing his website and talking with him I’ve also become keenly interested in fifes…rats! :roll:
Doc