Who makes very good small-holed rudall style flutes,
not old ones but new? Curious what folks think.
John Gallagher - HIGHLY recommended!
Yes, I believe Akiba sold one of these not long ago–no irony intended. It sounded wonderful
on his clip.
I still have that Gallagher Rudall. Sent it back to John for him to look it over and fine tune it. Came back even better than before. Such small holes, such little air required, such large tone. Doesn’t seem physically possible. It’s my #1 flute right now, still getting to know it, but so far I really like it. Definitely seems to play and sound like a classic Rudall. BTW, John is great to work with, will have phone conversations about exactly what you’re looking for and then try to make that happen in his shop.
Thanks for the kind words, Jim.
jason, i just got mine back too, pratten model, john added 4 keys keys…i love his work and his flutes.
he was talking about making a slideless model, something more affordable…
jim, maybe ask him about it?
jason, that R&R you have is the best small hole flute i have played, i would have never sold it unless i equally liked his pratten, and it had 2 keys already… 
i’ll throw in my regular vote for M&E ebonite R&R… i chose mine over the Copley, Forbes, and several other flutes. i’ve never tried a JG though.
to be honest it doesn’t have the best response, i just love the tone i get from ebonite; it is based off an R&R i believe.
cheers,
eric
I haven’t tried John’s Rudall model but my Pratten by him is superb as good or better than any other flutes I’ve tried (and I’ve tried most of the top makes) so I would add another recommendation for John because you can’t go wrong with his flutes. I also tried an Ormiston small-hole Rudall a while back that I thought was quite nice, you could really lean into it despite the small holes and bore. Terry McGee’s Rudall refined model would fit the bill, never tried this model but McGees are nice flutes.
I have three small-holed Irish flutes. Overall I like the Olwell best. It has almost a big-holed flute sound, is very easy to play and perfectly in-tune. The Noy is a bit more laid-back and requires a lot more attention to embouchure for me to play it in-tune. With one key, it’s fully chromatic, which I find a lot of fun. Of all my flutes, the Bleazey is the easiest to play, but the sound is a lot mellower than most people like for ITM playing. I still play it quite a bit because it’s so much fun to play.
chas, what model Noy are you playing? what type of embouchure? i love his flutes.
mine is a keyed large hole, but i know he makes a small hole version and both are based on R&R flutes.
While I love my ebonite M&E, it’s based on a large hole R&R flute.
I’ve only played one Bleazey, in boxwood…tiny holes but I can get quite a good, loud sound out of it. It’s really fun to play.
I am in no way stating it’s better than the other small holed flutes above, but it really rocked.
Eric
Eilam, I play a Noy small-holed flute with Rudall-style embouchure. (boxwood, gold-plated pounded rings, fire opal crown decoration; it’s my “trophy wife” flute) I had a flute on loan from Peter for a week before I placed my final order. I get along much better with small-holed flutes, so I borrowed a small-holed flute with Rudall and modern embouchures. After reading your comments in addition to those of some other Chiffsters, I think maybe I should have tried out one of his large-holed flutes, too. But I have a blast with this one, especially since it cross-fingers the chromatics so well.
The answer to this repeated question is painfully obvious – especially if phrased backwards.
Est-ce que Rudall?
(Just get one and be done with it).
Side-tracking a little bit… That’s really interesting to me that the cross-fingerings work on the Noy; I traded for that bleasey on this board hoping it would do that, but I tried some baroque fingerings and they didn’t work.
I couldn’t get a lot of volume out of it, and the endcap was “missing,” so I mailed it to Mr. Bleasey to add a cap and adjust the voicing. He finished it and it’s on the way back…
Back on track 
I have to admit I missed the OP’s request for “small-holed” rudalls… So I’ll throw in another weird suggestion that chas can comment on: the aulos.
Cheers,
eric
Eric could you stop comparing top end flutes with M&E or Aulos??? Jim asked for “very good” flutes, not for “good” ones…
(I don’t want to be polemic here or offend anyone, but some comparisons should just not be made, or it will confuse the occasional reader)
dear Lorenzo,
so i wanted to think for awhile before i responded to your post… i think everyone is fed up with locked threads, and a post like this is how they get started… i’ve seen so many of these debates, both here in the flute forum and even more so over on the whistle forum… they just always seem to degenerate into name-calling.
anway, i’ll try… i teach logic at a buddhist university; one of the things i stress is that you have to define things correctly. otherwise, there’s no point in “debating” anything, because really you’re not talking about the same thing.
what does “very good” mean to you? does it mean expensive? if so, then you’re right: i bought my M&E for $364, a new Gallagher keyless lists on his site at $1400. then again, relative to a tony dixon, maybe an M&E is “very good.”
is a forbes “very good”? i think most people, at least what i’ve seen on this board, rate the forbes pretty highly. i had a forbes, i sold it and kept my M&E. does that make it “very good”?
Chas mentioned a Bleazey; i have one of those. Guess what: i’d keep my M&E. does that make it “very good”?
All that being said, i recently bought that ebonite Hawkes from David. keeping that one. it’s better than my M&E. but does that make my M&E not “very good”?
i’m sorry if the post i made you considered confusing, or irrelevant. i would speculate that, at least to someone, they might be valuable. maybe not everyone can afford $1400 for flute. does that mean they have no hope of acquiring a “very good” flute?
Mr. Doc just posted in another thread that he has a GLP that is better than any other flute he’s tried. i don’t know, i have been able to try any other M&Es. maybe i got lucky and got a good one.
then all that being said… my definition of “very good” is probably different from yours, because, as was also pointed out to me recently, i’m still a beginner. i’m not a great flute player. to me “very good” mostly implies how easy a flute is to sound, how sweet is the 2nd octave, and what kind of tone can i get out of the low end. as for responsiveness, i’m not a good judge. 3rd octave? never been there. so probably when you say “very good” you mean the ability to do things that i haven’t even learned to do yet.
haven’t got a chance to try a Gallagher flute, can’t speak on it. Noy either. probably wouldn’t be able to tell you if they were “very good” even if i did.
so then Jim, sorry for hijacking your thread to talk about flutes that weren’t “very good.” i hope you find the one you’re looking for.
cheers,
eric
eric, i really like your post.
BTW, i have played quite a few M&E’s and the were all great.
they are modeled after a large hole R&R though …and they are plastic and one can keep them assembled…keyed M&E are even better value.
M&E used to have a small hole model …it too was a great flute for the price.
i think J.Gallagher was considering an all wood more affordable model, i would call him, he is a great guy to deal with…so is Peter Noy, also Casey and McGee…
We are talking about John Gallagher and he does not have a website you are thinking of Seth Gallagher completely different unrelated flute and pipe maker. John’s keyless flutes go for around $1200 last I heard, Seth only offers one model whereas John offers two and I hear he is working on another, as well as the fact that he will do any sort of custom work you could dream up. J. Gallagher flutes and M&E flutes are in a completely different league form each other, not to say that M&Es are bad but Gallaghers are that good!
Yes, your definition of very good is not going to be the same as mine and probably some other peoples’ as well. For some of us non-beginners (I’ve been playing flute for 7 years not as long as some but I am certainly no beginner any more, but we are all perpetual students) we do not judge a flute on how easy it is to get a sound out of, in fact John’s flutes take a decent bit of work to get a good sound out of but when you get them going they really sing and the range of tonal color available is incredibly wide. A sweet second octave I view as something that is up to me not the flute, in fact getting the hollow tone necessary to get a sweet second octave out of the Gallagher is another challenge compared to the easy playing Martin Doyle that I was playing before I got the Gallagher. Low end is another thing more up to the player, although that does have something to do with the flute the Doyle I have has a huge low D because of the bell end (widening of the bore at the end of the flute) and a huge bore bigger than a Pratten style flute, and the Gallagher doesn’t quite get the same power out of it, but I have only had it two months talk to me in a year or two! Responsiveness is another one that has more to do with the player, the tighter one’s embouchure the more responsive a flute will seem, but there is some level that has to do with the flute smaller holed/bored flutes may seem more responsive but that is not always the case. As for the third octave this varies widely from flute to flute depending on flute style, bore size, no keys v. 6 or less keys v. 8 keys, embouchure cut, etc etc. At the end of the day a flute that is difficult to play probably has more range of tone, dynamic, etc in it than an easy playing flute but it takes more experience to get all there is out of it and also time spent with that particular flute.
Don’t take my post the wrong way I am just trying to show how someone who has been playing for a while might look at these things. I was in the same position as yourself only a matter of years ago and I once got an awful bashing on this board for saying I thought a flute was great that other more experienced players did not like.
Just for info (and not to change the thread)… Last time I corresponded with John G (March 4) he told me a keyless Pratten or R&R is $1300. He also told me he can do a slideless/keyless, with a longer tenon, which would be “cheaper” (his word). Eric - JG does not have a website to my knowledge. I asked him about it a while ago and he said he has plenty of work without it.
Pat
Ah! Nyaa Ya !
Take most parts of Unseen122’s post and you’ll have my answer too…