Chiff and Fipple Forums

Yes, all good points.

I had a bunch of Olwells which I ended up selling. They were lovely flutes to play occasionally, but I found them unsatisfying for playing ITM for any time. The lack of tuning made them impractical for session play, and they just don't do what I wanted an ITM flute to do. Great flutes, but too valua...

I'm not disagreeing - I wouldn't touch this with a barge pole. The seller does not inspire confidence with the nonsense in the description, and is clearly not a flute player - no mention of how it actually sounds and plays, other than a nonsensical reference to 432Hz. I doubt it's unplayable the way...

And again with another price drop: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Antique-Beaut ... 1679995878?

Same BS description, more realistic price.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Antique-432-hertz-Rosewood-Rare-8-key-Irish-Flute-5-part-Edwardian-Concert-/321667110528?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item4ae4da9680 The word "rare" in ebay listings always makes me suspicious somehow. http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_67061_en.pdf "The Army...

Also, can you clarify which 3 keys the Murray has?

Interesting discussion. And that paper linked by Geoffrey Ellis reminded me of this experiment with violins . In blind tests, musicians preferred modern violins to old ones - even Stradivarius ones! Which underscores how important perception is in all these things - what we know about an instrument ...

There is a process of playing-in that happens in instruments with soundboards - fiddles, guitars and the like - where the lignin in the wood of the soundboard becomes more flexible as the soundboard vibrates. This happens over a period of several weeks with a new instrument or one that hasn't been p...

10-15 minutes is a VERY tight schedule - more of a warmup than a practise, so you'll have to be super-focused. I think your best bet is to choose the tune you want to work on and play it VERY slowly - don't even attempt to play at session speed. This gives you time to pay attention to tone, clarity,...

The keywork looks french-style to me, but the rest of the flute looks "german" (i.e. maybe german or czech or thereabouts) - metal end-caps, small holes, combined foot joint, ivory head joint. Overall I don't think it's an actual french flute.

I disagree about the keys. I often remove the keys when I oil - otherwise how are you going to get oil to the inside of those chimneys? And any hole will have exposed end-grain, where water enters more easily. More often I just use the piece-of-plastic method he shows, but that's just laziness/time....

I'd be curious about how these flutes behave with sweat. One of the drawbacks of resin flutes is that they start to feel "greasy" under the hands after a while. Wood doesn't so much, I suppose because it has places for the moisture to hide. Which would these flutes be more like? Reviol's f...

About the hyphen in "sean-nós". It's there because it's a compound word. Usually compound words don't use the hyphen, as in seanfhocal = sean + focal = old + word = proverb. But because the first word ends in the same consonant as the second one in sean-nós, the hyphen makes the spelling c...

Any thoughts on the ??? La Dame de Bellini ??? part? It's driving me nuts. I assume it's the name of a venue, but it's driving me nuts!

Well I followed Jem's advice, cleaned and de-greased the cork surface, and steamed. As per Jem and dunnp's advice I masked off the non-cork areas - a couple of tight layers to keep the steam out, and then a few looser layers for insulation. Then some cotton cloth around the rest of the body. Then I ...