jimhanks wrote:
To Geoffrey, I do find it sad that these issues led to you having to stop making those instruments. As I understand, the Ellis NAFs were very well received, and I would have liked to have played them, I'm sure.
Were similar issues behind the dropping of wooden whistles from your catalog? I was fortunate to have acquired a used low F whistle in buying a (I think) from C&F somewhat recently and it is very nice. I wouldn't hesitate to acquire others if they were available.
My decision to leave those particular flutes (NA flutes) behind was only partly based upon the politics, but I won't deny that was prominent factor. I still make a type of rim blown flute that is roughly based upon artifacts that were found in the Four Corners area of the Southwest, so I still do
some work based upon "native" instruments. But in truth, they are so different than the artifacts that they are not even recognizable as such. They have the same scale as a couple of the artifacts, but that is where the similarity ends and for whatever reason they are not nearly as controversial.
It is the "plains" flutes (aka "Love Flute", "Courting Flute", etc.) that seem to be the focus of controversy, and I had built my reputation making those flutes. By the time I quit making them, I had become a bit weary of them in many ways. That's not a shortcoming of the flute--they simply didn't mesh with my personal growth as a maker. I had pretty much hit the quality ceiling with them--I couldn't make them any better or more consistently than I had been doing for years and I was feeling some ennui. Added to that was the realization that the overwhelming majority of players who took an interest in these flutes were not really musicians. In fact, the flute tended to attract people who actively
denied being "musical" in the formal sense, but they wanted a simple, accessible instrument that could play mellow, sweet sounding phrases. The NA flute excels at that.
But the other problem for me was that most of these players could not tell the difference between a finely made NA flute that was a good musical instrument and a hyped-up, over-decorated "wall hanger" that barely played, but was hung about with lots of cool, native-looking bling. I aspired to make
instruments, not something you'd find on the wall of a new-age bookstore

So I was routinely frustrated by that. I'd craft a really good musical instrument and someone would say, "I love your flutes! They are my favorite! Yours and ___________'s flutes!" And they would name some other maker who turned out total schlock. Sort of takes the shine off the apple a bit when your customers can't tell the difference between your work and a table leg with holes in it

Needless to say this did not apply to everyone--there were plenty of great musicians into these flutes, but it happened frequently enough to irritate.
So there was this aspect as well as the culture issue that made me uncomfortable about my role in manufacturing those flutes. And to top it off, the NA flute market was saturated with those amateur makers and it was collapsing on itself. This all coincided with my own change of direction, which was toward world flutes of all kinds. One of the reasons I wanted to make conical bore flutes and headjoints for Boehm flutes was because in both cases the bar was raised very high. The players into Irish trad and similar styles of music would not be satisfied with a sub-standard flute (think of those "Irish" flutes from Pakistan on ebay). They would know the difference between a real flute and a wall-hanger. That appealed to me, so I walked away from the NA flute and never looked back. I'll take working with fussy, perfectionist players any day

Much more challenging.
My wooden whistles were dropped simply because they were not marketable. They took a lot of work and the price I asked was too rich for the whistle market. And they are not as loud as metal whistles. I put some on tour through C&F many years ago and got really nice feedback. Players liked them very well, but they could get good quality metal whistles for a much lower price that would play louder. So since I was already over-extended, I let them go.