chas wrote:It's my understanding, though, that for his Irish flutes the designs are his own. That's why he offers a large-holed and small-holed rather than Rudall-style bore and Pratten-style bore, each with whichever embouchure cut you want.
Okay, that makes sense, although my take is
slightly different. I was aware that his trad flutes weren't rigorously faithful copies of certain types, and of course there were the various heads and embouchure cuts to choose from, but during discussions with him at the time, Peter said that he always referred to historical models for their well-established virtues, and those elements would come together in composite ways. For example, while the head on mine was a Rudall copy, the body, which I left to his discretion, was of a Nicholson design. In that regard, the result was all Noy. How much further his own revisions went into it he didn't say, but as I recall, at the time he wasn't interested in significantly reworking already-good original designs, much less creating new ones (aside from making hybrids, as with mine) because he thought the old designs had enduring value ever worth revisiting. I got the sense that this emphasis was something of a passion with him, although I must also admit that it seemed frankly rather eccentric to focus so strongly on the historic for trad flutes while his contemporaries were all about breaking new ground; but historic is his main gig, and he is sought by professionals of that sector, so I figured he knew what he was doing when it came to his own patch. And after all, we trad players celebrate the old English models, but as those become less and less available, my chances of finding The One out of that dwindling lot seemed next to nil, so I went with Noy as a logical substitute. I can only say the result certainly worked for me, and then some. But of course all that was well over 13 years ago, and I'm sure much has transpired since then. I don't recall a small-holed option being available to me when I commissioned mine, so if that memory's correct, I'm glad but not all that surprised to hear that Noy is advancing the options in his trad flute line. If he is now exploring designs wholly unique to him, I think it can only bode even better (although from my subjective angle it's hard for me to imagine how much better you can get - not to take anything away from other makers, but this is just to say that Noy's definitely among the top ones, IMO).
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Tribal musician