Feadoggie wrote:Yes, pure conjecture, but also imaginative rationalization I fear. Hmmm... It's made of ash, maybe he knows that basball players use flame tempered ash baseball bats and he is trying to harden the edge of the embouchure.
O.K. I'm stumped. I fail to see how my description was in any way, shape, or form a "rationalization". The point was not "the color may be from oxidized brass particles and therefore McCarty is the Antonio Stradivarius of modern flute makers", my point was only that there could be a couple of reasons for the black tinge around the edge. More along the lines of an explanation than a rationalization.
Feadoggie wrote:Regardless of how the holes became scorched any decent flute maker would have further finished the holes and dealt with the darkening, especially on the most important part of the flute, the embouchure.
No one is arguing that point.
Feadoggie wrote:It still looks like someone polished a ...
Crude, and unnecessary. This brings me back to my original inspiration to send the flute out.... which was the over-abundance of rectally-extracted opinions regarding the flute. I was amazed at how many "authorative" judgments were made on these flutes by folks who did not actually have the benefit of seeing, playing, or hearing the flutes. It is no surprise that the bulk of these posts are hostile and derogatory. The fine art of snide commentary based on naught more the hearsay and conjecture is likely as old a language itself, although it has truly been perfected with the development of the internet.
Jem accomplished what I hoped he would accomplish: He provided a balanced opinion (a little good and a lot of bad) based on examining an actual working copy of the instrument. Yet even with the benefit of his review, there are still numerous derogatory posts from folk who have either misinterpreted or just not read the Jem's findings.
Doug_Tipple wrote: Regarding the McCarty flute, I trust Jem's opinion that it is a playable instrument, and I thank Jem for taking the time to report on this in his usual comprehensive way. But whether or not the McCarty flute is a playable instrument is really not the issue here. The issue, as it has been from the beginning, is whether Eric McCarty actually made the instrument in his shop in Utah, as he claims, or whether McCarty purchased Pakistani flutes and added personal touches to the instrument on his lathe and then marketed them as his own brand. I'm inclined to believe the latter is true, but that is merely speculation but, hopefully, a step upward from "silly speculation". I don't see how any further examination of the flute is going to give a definitive answer to this issue.
I will agree with Doug on this, the similarities between the McCarty flute and the other Pakistani flutes is more than just superficial. The more recent "table leg mutation"
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=84377&hilit=ugliest+flute looks suspiciously like a childish attempt to hid the flute's ancestry. However, this is once again conjecture, and there is no definitive proof either way whether or not McCarty is, in fact, crafting his own product or just rebranding.
Doug_Tipple wrote:I trust Jem's opinion that it is a playable instrument, and I thank Jem for taking the time to report on this in his usual comprehensive way. But whether or not the McCarty flute is a playable instrument is really not the issue here..
I agree with Jem that the playability of the instrument was a worthy topic of clarification. The McCarty sample I provided was not, by any means, a great flute, but neither was it an unholy abomination that violated all natural laws of flutedom. Was it's craftsmanship second rate? Yes. Does it compare to a McGinty, McGee, Hamilton, or Burns flute? Not even close. To those who wish to hold forth regarding the lowly construction quality of the flute, I can only apologize that it was not, in fact, carved from a rare tree, which only lived in the cretaceous period but was resurrected via genetic cloning and reconstitution experiments for the express purpose of creating an exclusive line of flutes. It is also regrettable that the rings are made of cheap brass, and not of pure mithril mined from the depths of Morea using dwarvish child labor and hand-forged by elven smiths. It is sad that the wood was not hand-burnished using only the finest animal pelts from recently extinct species of arctic mammals.
All that aside, if you hold it to your mouth and blow in the embouchure hole:
(1) It makes a sound
(2) It plays in tune
(3) It doesn't sound like a laryngitic water buffalo.
Congratulations, its a flute. What more do you want?
Wriggle on.
