vintage flutes

[Benny]

Last year I had a lesson with a guy from NY who plays vintage flutes (Louis Lot, Bonneville and Rive concert flutes, a Haynes Alto and Powell picc) and never before had I heard of the argument for playing old flutes. I didn't think about it much until recently when I read an article by Robert Dick last week on the Larry Krantz site. It seems weird what people go through to correct the pitch of these instruments.
Does anyone here own an 'old scale' flute (or previously owned) and how did you find it??

If you're intersted, here's the link......

http://www.larrykrantz.com/rdick2.htm#cooper

[bruce bailey]

For years all of the great players played on the old scale flutes and listening to recordings of Baker, Panitz, Wimmer, etc. you will hear some great sounds. The new scale flutes like Cooper and Bennett (the scale I make) are better, BUT if you find an oldie tha thas the great sound you like, you will find that even a 50 year old Haynes will have a better scale than most saxes. The biggest problem with the vintage flutes is the price which can excede a new high end Boston flute. I find that a closed hole Haynes from 1930-1965 is still one of the best doubling flutes partly due to the body thickness (.018"+) and mint ones will be under $2,500. Expect to pay over $5,000 for a decent pre #2,200 Powell.

[Gordon (NZ)]

There have been huge improvements in head design in the last 10 or 20 years. I find many (all?) top professional flutes of several decades ago, very disappointing compared with what is offering today.

[Benny]

How can a flute built to play at 435 have a better scale than a sax built to play at 440 though, considering people try to play these flutes at 440? Sorry, I'm just confused.

[Gordon (NZ)]

If you are referring to what I wrote, I was writing about tone/volume/response - ease of playing.

Saxes hardly come into it. Haynes was about the last top maker to change to a revised, improved scale (such as the 'Cooper' scale) in their acoustic design.

And I agree that a different pitch messes around with the scale. Many makers are now making flutes at 444! Ridiculous when there is a 440 convention. I understand Europe is mainly playing at 444.

[kymarto]

Hi Gordon,

I think I have to respectfully disagree with you about headjoint design in modern vs. vintage flutes. Unless you go back to the late 1800s headjoint design has changed very little (until the advent of the Cooper). I don't know about your part of the world, but at least in Japan and the US vintage Louis Lots are highly in demand, as are vintage Powell and Haynes flutes, along with some other makes such as Bonneville, Rudall, Carte, A. Hammig, etc. These fetch considerably higher prices than comparable modern flutes.

About 25 years I had the embouchure plate on my bass flute modified by Orlando Yori in Modena, Italy. He must be dead by now, but he was very famous for the miracles he performed with his embouchure designs. I was skeptical, but the mod he did for me was *amazing* on my old Rudall, Carte plumbing, almost unbelieveable in how much more volume was produced. He told me that was par for the course with alto and bass flutes, but that he was lucky to get an extra 10% out of concert flutes, since the design had already been so highly perfected.

I think it is more a change in "style". It's not that the best of the old designs are inferior, they just produce a different sound and need a different embouchure. Rampal was once asked the difference between his 1869 gold Louis Lot and him modern gold Haynes. He replied that at first there was lots of difference, but that after a little while the differences didn't matter anymore.

Nor are the modern scales really so different from the traditional "long" scale--the flute already having the best intonation of any woodwind. There have been small improvements, to be sure, but nothing so radical as to invalidate the traditional scale, to which most good flutists adjust unconsciously.

Mechanically flutes have not changed much either for the past 120 years. It is true that some of the early Lots had keycups that were really too small, and modern flutes are better in this regard, but beyond that there have been no real innovations since the time of Boehm.


Perhaps your mileage is different, and I admit that I have not tried many flutes iin the past 10 years or so, but judging by prices and by reputation it would seem that modern designs have hardly supplanted their vintage brethren.

Of all the woodwinds the flute is the most perfect in terms of scale and design, and has changed the least in the last century or so.

Toby

[Gordon (NZ)]

I was writing mainly about the modern design heads having a larger, more squared, much more undercut and overcut embouchure hole than older designs.

This makes for much more available volume, and available variation in tone.

It is indeed true that some people like The gentler 'drawing room' sound that the older heads produce, but such people are definitely a small minority. I doubt you'd find any such embouchure holes in a major symphony orchestra.