Sweetheart Flutes
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sfmans
- Posts: 208
- Joined: Thu Mar 12, 2009 5:41 am
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- Tell us something.: I've been a whistle player for over 40 years now, which is a sobering thought. I got started on a battered old Generation D and, well, just never stopped really!
Current gigs are The Powderkegs border morris, the concert band Trebuchet with our music theatre show The Mill Ballads www.themillballads.com, and Welsh dance band Caffl. - Location: High Peak, Derbyshire
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Re: Sweetheart Flutes
'85 would be around when I got my first Sweet D piccolo ('fife for folk music'); the head joint of that one unfortunately stayed in France after a wedding gig (the body made it home, the head didn't). My later D piccolo is still going strong, but I am tempted by one of the Professional D fifes ...
Steve Mansfield
http://www.lesession.co.uk
http://www.lesession.co.uk
Re: Sweetheart Flutes
Pancelticpiper, that was a MAJOR walk down memory lane!! My second whistle was one of the old flageolets in blackwood. Back when I was collecting.
Tygh
Tygh
Remember, you didn't get the tiger so it would do what you wanted. You got the tiger to see what it wanted to do. -- Colin McEnroe
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pancelticpiper
- Posts: 5309
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- Tell us something.: Playing Scottish and Irish music in California for 45 years.
These days many discussions are migrating to Facebook but I prefer the online chat forum format. - Location: WV to the OC
Re: Sweetheart Flutes
Yes for me too!
As I had said my first Irish flute was a Sweetheart one in the late 1970s.
By the early 1980s I had a rosewood D whistle, a Baroque flute, and mezzo flutes in F, G, and A.
I used the small F flute in the band quite a bit- the string players would capo up 3 frets and we could all play as usual but get a quite different sound, it was terrific.
Among the old stuff I have is a typed letter from Ralph (there was no internet in 1980, believe it or not).
Also among the old stuff was a small stack of Xerox copies of the Irish Flute page of the Sweetheart catalog. In the 80s I was going around to festivals teaching Irish Flute workshops and I'd hand out those sheets, advocating beginners get Sweetheart flutes. At one festival a shop would stock up beforehand and show up with several Sweetheart maple D flutes. I'd stop by the shop on the way to my workshop, pick up a few, and let people try them. The shop would sell several each weekend to people who had taken my workshops.
A great-playing wood Irish flute for $125? You just couldn't do better.
As I had said my first Irish flute was a Sweetheart one in the late 1970s.
By the early 1980s I had a rosewood D whistle, a Baroque flute, and mezzo flutes in F, G, and A.
I used the small F flute in the band quite a bit- the string players would capo up 3 frets and we could all play as usual but get a quite different sound, it was terrific.
Among the old stuff I have is a typed letter from Ralph (there was no internet in 1980, believe it or not).
Also among the old stuff was a small stack of Xerox copies of the Irish Flute page of the Sweetheart catalog. In the 80s I was going around to festivals teaching Irish Flute workshops and I'd hand out those sheets, advocating beginners get Sweetheart flutes. At one festival a shop would stock up beforehand and show up with several Sweetheart maple D flutes. I'd stop by the shop on the way to my workshop, pick up a few, and let people try them. The shop would sell several each weekend to people who had taken my workshops.
A great-playing wood Irish flute for $125? You just couldn't do better.
Richard Cook
c1980 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle
c1980 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle