Antique C# flute

Irish Flute
1

I’ve owned a wonderful old Geo Cloos flute for a long time. Ivory head, lots of keys. I was taken aback when I saw that period 19th century flutes from Rod Cameron were based on two models - Rudall and Rose, and Geo Cloos.

Mine plays wonderfully with the slide out a little bit - but you’re in A=430 or something. Withthe slide in as far as it can go you’re in pitch, but notes like the bottom D are flat. My question is, would a shorter barrel help? Or an entire new head?

Going the other way I have a Boosey and Co piccolo with a non original plastic barrel that plays in 440.

2

Shortening the head or barrel won’t really solve the problem because it will sharpen the left hand notes (C, B, A etc) more than it will sharpen the right hand notes (E, D etc). This basically leaves you the choice of having the left hand notes in tune and the right hand notes flat, or having the right hand notes in tune and the left hand notes sharp. Flutes can really only be optimally in tune with themselves (i.e., in tune across their full range of notes) at one target pitch (or a very narrow band of pitches). It sounds like the flute you have is in tune with itself around A=425-430 hz, which is common for other Geo Cloos flutes I’ve seen. They are fine for playing solo, but won’t work for playing with others at A=440 hz.

3

Paddler is right, Cran Dubh. The scale of a flute is a body thing; the head is made adjustable merely to allow for variability in embouchure approach, environmental factors, etc. If the body is made so that the flute plays nicely in tune at say 430Hz, it’s going to be too long to play nicely at 440Hz. Get it in tune at the top of the tube (eg the A note), and the D will be too flat. Tune the D and the A will be too sharp.

Sometimes, you can take one of these old flutes and shorten the body scale. But it’s a job for a professional, and one with nerves of steel. You need to find ideally a few sections of the flute where you can snitch a few mm off.

Might be just below the G# pad on the LH section, but then you’re going to have to fix up the tenon.

Might be from the top of the RH section, but then you have to deepen the socket. And will that then bring the Long F key touch too far up?

Might be below the 6th finger hole, or from the top of the foot, but will that bring the Eb, C# and C key touches too high?

And if the top of the foot, again we need to deepen the socket. Will that cause any problems?

Arrgghhhh!

Now, sometimes it isn’t quite that bad. Sometimes, the body is “more-or-less” OK at playing at 440, but the foot is far too long. This is what I have dubbed “Flat Foot Syndrome”. It was really a big thing back in Nicholson’s day, and my suspicion is that it came from opening up the finger holes, sharpening the body notes, but leaving the foot notes in their original places. Half an improvement.

You can recognise it by graphing the pitch of all the notes on the flute, with the flute tuned so A is 440. If most of the notes above the foot are OK, or are close enough to be tweaked, but the foot notes (Eb, D, C# and C) are dramatically flatter, then your flute is suffering “Flat Foot Syndrome”. Then you need to work out how to sharpen the foot. EG shortening the bottom of the RH section, top of the foot or both. But again, will that mean the foot key touches get in your way?

I sometimes wonder about having a cylinder of Helium with a delivery tube taped to the head of your flute. But it would make you sound a bit silly when discussing what set to play next at the session. That grand title, “The Bucks of Oranmore”, doesn’t sound so impressive if delivered an octave up.

4

OK, I’ll leave it well enough alone. I used to trawl eBay for anything people didn’t want - German/French/American flutes - and bought a lot of odds and ends. I’ve a Cloos flute that seems happy above 440, for instance. A pipemaker friend who used to work on these thought that one was actually handmade - these other Cloos products looked more like the product of a factory.

My Martin Frères 8 key is happy at 440, except for the characteristic abysmally flat F#. Do either of you have any experience with people tuning those up? Undercutting on the inside would be the obvious solution. Or perhaps I could have one of those voicing keys fit that sharpens that note.

5

Have you tried venting the Eb key?

6

I don’t want to have to press Eb every time - or do you mean expanding its hole? Some old French simple system flutes had a special key to sharpen F#, its touch was next to the Eb, the hole was between G and F#. And some had a mechanism to open this automatically - that’d be ideal.

7

Most flutes of that period seem to have very flat F# notes, Cran Dubh. My guess is that they were attempting to preserve the old cross fingering for F natural. So F# is xxx xoo Eb open, whereas Fnat would be xxx xox Eb closed. It will only take you a few moments on your flute to show how imperfect that aim was. The second fingering isn’t a semitone down on the former, more a quarter tone. So you have to add a dramatic embouchure sharpening/flattening as well.

And yes, you can sharpen them, but it’s quite an increase needed to get them up to reasonable pitch. It’s usually not enough to undercut upwards and downwards, you often need to increase the size of the hole as well. EG from typically around 7mm to around 8.5mm diameter, plus the undercutting. You need to approach this cautiously - the last thing you want is to have the drill tear into the hole. I do it with the RH section firmly clamped in a horizontal chuck on my mill, and lining up the vertical drilling chuck in the old hole. Unless you have access to a good controlled clamping and drilling system, you’d be better off taking it slowly with hand tools. For the undercutting, I use a Dremel style handpiece with a conical cutting tool.

But it’s well worth the effort. Not only does it dramatically improve the pitch issue, it improves the performance in that part of the range and the notes above it, in both octaves. These flutes tend to be a bit stifled with their small holes.

Proceed very carefully though, checking the pitch of all the notes likely to be affected (eg at least F#, G and A in both octaves), and monitoring the sharpest of them as you go. Make small changes and check often - it’s harder to put the wood back!

And good to check the E notes in both octaves first. If they are tending flat (because they expected the Eb key venting) it would be good to tune them up a bit first, as that will contribute a little to the F# note pitch. Not a lot though - it’s a small hole some distance away! And check again after tweaking the F#, as the extra volume of the F# hole can flatten lower notes a bit.

8

Thanks for the super helpful advice Terry! I’ll take it to my pipe making friend when I have the chance - I haven’t dumped any funky old flute projects on him in 20 years or so.