List,
If you could get a high quality Irish Flute from a major musical Instrument manufacter like Artley within 2 weeks, who would you buy your Flute from? wait about 1 year and get it from our current high end Flute makers or would you go ahead and buy from the manufacter?
The assumption being equal quality and price…
Ben AKA Mr. Fandango
Wow.
I got a high quality Irish flute from a high end maker the very day I visited his shop and handed him the check. No lines, no waiting.
Yes, I’ve heard stories of this happening…
Loren
Mr. F makes good points, and I understand exactly where he’s coming from. In my opinion, you’d always end up with a percentage of buyers who favor the small makers, even if the quality of the mass-produced flutes was comparable. After all, we can all buy very high quality clothing at Sears and even Wal-Mart, but more expensive boutique stores still spring up and thrive everywhere. It’s about differentiation as much as quality. By definition, a mass-producer reduces differentiation.
Which would I buy? Dunno.
Personally, I would wait the extra time. Why? Because one person put in their effort to make a great instrument. I know the name of the person who made it and they may be a friend of mine. I have more respect for individuals producing instruments rather than instruments made by faceless workers on an assembly line. You make a decent point Ben, but there is not a big enough market and the cost for a company like Artley to buy the materials for the instruments and their making. Plus, how many of us already playing nice instruments would get rid of their Flute to have one of the new ones? I know I wouldn’t.
Depends on what I was looking for in a flute. But I had exactly the same choice in guitars. I could have bought a good, USA made Fender Strat for a grand in a matter of minutes, in nearly any music store in the country, when I was guitar shpping. But I waited several months and spent the same money on a Rickenbacker, through internet order, because the differentiated features of that guitar were more attractive. (Fenders are boooooring! ;P)
As an aside, anybody on the forum can talk to Doc Jones and get a high-end flute quite quickly. If yer lucky you can also call up Powell’s in Galway and a get a Sam Murray keyless shipped that same week - he occasionally makes flutes for them to retail.
Do you read your replies at all Mr. Fandango?
It cannot be done
Maybe there’s a model for thinking about this over in the mando ecosystem, where the prices for high-end models make what many of us spend on flutes look like beer & cigarette money? There are large companies producing reputable instruments, small makers producing prestige instruments, part-time makers (like my friend, Mike, who turns out a couple of gorgeous instruments a year), and a vigorous vintage market too–all are providing tools for serious musicians. As far as I could see, back when I was watching the madolincafe site and elsewhere, the intro of mass produced quality instruments didn’t have a negative impact on the number or variety of independent makers, so clearly some musicians would rather get their instrument custom-built, or at least have that more individualized experience, even at the expense of the wait.
And look at the number of independent guitar makers, even though it seems quite possible to get a fine guitar, without a wait, either off the rack or on the used/vintage market.
But probably the most problematic assumption is “equal quality.” I haven’t been on any music forum yet where there was more agreement than otherwise about what that meant in any discussion of makers & models. I mean, just check out the recent whistle discussions here. And isn’t that part of the fun of it, eh? So the chances of finding a consensus that a large maker’s mass-produced simple system flute is as good as someone’s treasured (insert maker’s name here) seem not so good.
Hey Ben,
I’ll buy when Toyota starts making Irish Flutes. I like reliability.
Loren
And even then I’d wait until they make a hybrid.
And even then I’d wait until they make a hybrid.[/quote
I was going to measure a Edsel, and start making those flutes. The original was so successful…
List,
without a doubt most most everyone on this list has strong opinions! Loren I think can be the man to take the lead and become the Toyota of Flute makers.
I think it would be nice if Irish Flute making paralleled Metal Flute making… that is there are a number of Mass produced Flute makers as well as a bunch of Custom Flute makers
Ben
The Edsel had a bizarre appearance, recall. It was described as a Chevrolet sucking a lemon.
Yes, i want a hybrid flute–runs partly on breath, partly on
Guinness.
The idea of a hybrid flute is not such a bad idea. Electric-acoustic guitars are sort of hybrid in that you can play them with or without an amplifier. It would be nice to have an acoustic flute with a tiny onboard digital processor. If you wanted more volume, reverberation, or more bark (or whatever quality you desired), that could be chosen in the effects processor. However, if you wanted to play it at an acoustic session, that would be no problem, either.
As for the Edsel, I wonder what they were thinking. It had an ugly appearance and an ugly name (no matter that it was a family name), and people didn’t buy it, no matter how nice of car it may have been otherwise. Let’s face it, many people make a buying decision (or mate selection) based on appearance alone, which isn’t such a smart maneuver, in my opinion.
Ford hyped the Edsel so much the public was in a frenzy
by the time it appeared. There were shows where they
flashed parts of the car, the grill, say, on the screen,
but you never saw the whole deal. Worked. Oceans
of drool and then…a dud.
It had various new technology, e.g. you shifted gears by
pressing square buttons on the dashboard, that was
unworkable (who wants to constantly press buttons on
the dash while
driving?) It looked silly, it had as unromantic
a name as a car ever had, and on the day it was
released and a fleet of them went on a long
drive before the public eye, two of em broke down.
It’s actually fairly easy to run a flute through a guitar effects processor. I recently, on a lark, bought a harmonica pickup from a music store that was going out of business. I hooked it up to my flute with the supplied velcro strips, and ran the whole thing through a fairly fancy VOX multieffects pedal. It was fun for a while until the novelty wore off.
A good analegy of production flutes, Fandango is wishing for… 
Maybe we could put some square buttons, to change octaves? 
FYI I visited the the Ford museum when I was in Michigan, the Edsel was a ugly car
In all the discussion on this topic, I don’t think anyone has mentioned Terry McGee’s Grey Larsen Preferred (GLP). I regard Terry as a “high end maker”, and it’s interesting to note that you can buy the GLP in two ways:
- Direct from Terry, with a 18-month wait for $2,867 (6-key model in Blackwood), or
- From Grey, with no wait, for $3,067
Terry undertakes to keep Grey supplied with enough flutes to be able to make them available with no waiting period.
From the buyer’s point of view, the price difference values the waiting period - seems a bit low to me (ie Grey’s price should be higher). Anyway, from Terry’s point of view, the extra sales he gets via Grey must be enough to justify sinking time and effort into making several at a time, even though they might take a while to sell. For him, the price difference is effectively the cost of holding stock (plus presumably a commission for Grey).