This is a review of my new Forbes Christie flute. Pictures will follow in a couple of days once I am back in the stream of things (returned from holiday yesterday). (And possibly an inadequate sound clip of me playing it too?)
I also own (so you know where I am coming from) the following other flutes:
- 6 Key McGee GLP in Blackwood.
- Casey Burns Folk Flute in Mopane.
- Silver bodied Yamaha Boehm Flute with B-Foot (674).
- Nameless German 4 key bought as scrap from ebay and reworked to playability by myself.
- Casey Burns Mopane Keyless in A
- Sweetheart keyless in Blackwood in F.
The Forbes Christie flute is a keyless blackwood in D with silver rings and a C-Natural left hand thumbhole.
Firstly, I must say that dealing with Forbes (his first name - not to be confused with the other flute maker who’s surname is Forbes…) is a pleasure and he knows his stuff. When I first fell for the flute it had no rings and no thumb hole - Forbes was very accomodating about retrofitting the rings and adding the thumb hole with consultation on exactly where I wanted it.
The flute was one of those on the table at Boxwood where Mr. Christie was the resident flutemaker this year. I tried them all and definitely felt an affinity with this particular flute, though all of the others were good too. I borrowed the flute several times during the week and used it at some of the Boxwood classes before deciding to buy it. The extra work I wanted done on the flute meant that I couldn’t take it with me there and then
. So we had to arrange an alternative handover. This actually happened in Dunkeld in Scotland, where both the Christie’s and we managed to be on holiday at the same time (and a delightful visit to Hamish Moore’s pipe making workshop - yum! But that’s another story…)
The workmanship is excellent. The flute has thread wound tenons with waxed silk thread on them. The wood is very thin around the tenons, so this flute is going to be spending its time in a hard case unless I make myself some tenon caps. The bore is clean and gleams when looking through the flute against the light. The holes are comfortable to close with slightly rounde off edges and slightly ergonomically positioned (talk to him about this if you want one, since all of his flutes at Boxwood had slightly different hole layouts as he wanted feedback from people there). I have no problem reaching the holes without any feeling of stretching, but I have biggish hands, so I cannot judge other people’s success here.
The flute has an adjustable stopper with a cork faced up by a silver disk - He also offered a parabolic reflector on the stopper, but I found that I preferred the flat stopper. He also supplies a stick with 17 and 19mm marked on the ends and recommends pushing the stopper out of the flute when cleaning after playing - very easy to do so and to reposition the stopper using the stick he provides, though doing so takes a bit of getting used to coming from the “omigod don’t change the stopper position” school of thought. The stick has just the right width to push out the stopper cleanly too.
The flute also has a tuning slide which fits very well and does not move unless I want it to. It is in tune for me at 440Hz with the slide pulled out slightly over a quarter of an inch. And the stopper is at the standard 19mm.
The flute is acoustically a Pratten, though I don’t know what flute he used as a model, nor how much he has changed the design from his original. The tuning is also far too good to be a simple copy. It has a head, barrel, body (with all the holes) and long footjoint (again, pictures to follow) and is utterly gorgeous in a “modern-traditional-zen” sort of way. I particularly like his rings which are flush with the body, giving the whole flute a streamlined look.
It is a big, free-blowing, powerful flute. I tried a Skip Healy at Boxwood, and that was the only flute I’ve tried with an even bigger feel. Apart from the Boehm of course… And it makes a lot of sound! One of the reasons I wanted another flute was that my McGee (lovely flute too by the way) is a bit quiet in the sessions I go to, and I end up having to force it to be as loud as I can get it - which has deleterious effects on the sound I can make with it. This flute fills that role (“session cannon”?) admirably. It can also be played softly and is capable of having a very sweet, carrying piano too (when I am up to it that is…).
The barking in the bottom register (when I want to) is probably comparable with what I can get out of the Casey Burns Folk flute, which has a very nice bottom end too. Nothing like June McCormack showed us on her flute during her classes though - perhaps that may be the player though… 
The hard D is a bit stabler on the Windward flute than on the folk flute flute - but this could be me more than the flute.
The exceptional about this flute for me though is the top end - Working above the second register A, the flute has a very nice, easy speaking tone capable of good dynamics (i.e. even I can get my second register B out piano without strangling it). And working with Rod Garnett’s help at Boxwood, we worked out the fingerings for both this flute and the McGee up to the third octave B flat, which they both do rather well. Not that I would play up there in a session unless I was feeling evil 
.
The thumb hole is a matter of personal taste - I tried someone’s flute at Boxwood (the Skip Healy mentioned above) with a thumb hole and liked it so much, that I decided to restructure my entire collection of simple sytem flutes to use it. It is so much simpler for me to have a common C Natural for both Boehm and wooden flute. All the other C natural possibilities are of course still available should I want them. Restructuring the whole collection will take some time though.
As I understand it, Windward have not yet settled on exactly how they want to do the keys for the keyed models, so if someone was to order one, then some detailed work with him would probably pay off, in terms of where exactly one wants the touches, etc. The quality of the key workmanship I saw at Boxwood was very good though and certainly the keys as they were were all very usable. (I’ve found making dummy touches out of plasticine on a keyless flute can be very useful for finding out where the touches should go.)
I hope this review was helpful and, as I said, pictures and maybe a sound clip will follow soon.
'bye,
Chris.
