I am looking for an irish flute that sounds like a concert flute and the same ability to play the 3 registers.Please help!!!
Thanx
Brian
Hey Brian, I saw your location listed as Rhode Island. There’s a flutemaker in that area you might want to check out, Skip Healy
I think you need to be clearer about what you want the flute for, because really, you’re not going to find an Irish flute that sounds like a Boehm (orchestral) flute. They differ in lots of important ways (tone hole placement and size, conical bore vs. cylindrical bore, shape of the embouchure hole, and of course the shape of the head) which end up meaning, in the end, that they will sound very different.
Of course, the biggest difference in sound is how you play the beast… play an old system flute with a classical embouchure and that omnipresent vibrato and you’ll sound very different from a session player, and play a modern system flute in the Irish style and the sound will be very Irish…
His name is escaping me at the moment, but one of the more famous (and expensive) makers also makes Boehm flutes in wood; his pieces in whichever system might be what you want, depending on what you’re planning.
–Chris
Chris Abell is the maker of Boehm wooden flutes - I think they are about $10,000!! Powell is making them now too, about the same price (?). If this is what you want, you can get older, early Boehm flutes for a lot less (on EBay for example), but you have to watch for pitch, etc.
By the way, a small correction. Classical players don’t use “that omnipresent vibrato.” We vary the amount of vibrato to be appropriate for the style period of the piece, the shape or intensity of a particular phrase or section, to match our fellow players, etc. Sometimes there is no vibrato at all. It’s far from omnipresent - just a lot more more present than in Irish trad!
I do not mean to single out the person who innocently just made this remark. It is made often enough on the various boards, usually disparagingly, that I wanted to make a correction. I guess if we all played with impeccable taste in every genre, no such issues would arise! Sadly, I can’t make any such claim 
There is currently an ugly classical vs. trad debate on irtrad (again). Yuk! It keeps me off that board, which is a shame. I wish some of the folks would use that time to appreciate each other’s talents and improve their own playing instead.
Cheers, good luck with whatever you decide about the flute -
Heather M.
What about getting the three octives or registers?
In my experience, to reliably get all 3 registers with good intonation and tone production, a Boehm flute, not Irish, would be the way to go. Again, it depends on what you want it for. Are you going to be playing Irish music? If so, you only need 2 octaves, really only 1 1/2 most of the time.
What do you want it for?
Heather M.