Skip’s prices are great right now. Anyone know the difference between his two piece and three piece keyless in terms of playing it?
NONE! 
But check with Skip just to be sure.
At $575 for a new 2-piece flute, I myself am tempted! 
I’ve had 4 different Healy flutes and the quality does vary. But I was ready to commit to the best of the 4, till the previous owner wanted it back! 
Skip’s flutes have a big sound, but tend to be sweet in the upper range.
I’m very impressed with Skip’s design and I suspect it was given to him by Chris Abell (Strictly conjecture on my part. 
).
All The Best!
None? Well blowing requirements may be the same (I’ve never played a Healy) but I like to slightly offset the LH tone holes.
Hey Guinness,
Skips flutes have a long body anyway. The short foot section on the 3-piece was for the addition of an Eb key.
Here’s a picture of a 3-Piece and 2-Piece Healy flutes that I had. Note, the 2-piece flute is much older and has a wooden tennon (new ones have a silver slide).
P.S. As per your avatar. I once had a cat that loved Bock Beer! 
He would even eat peanuts.
Hei, Sillydill,
I see that both of the Healy flutes in your pic have a “cutaway” at the far side of the embouchure hole.
Is that typical of all Healy flutes?
Just wondering…
ah, yep 
Skip apprenticed with Chris Abell in flutemaking from 1980 to 1983.
1980 to 1983, isn’t that when Chris Abell was at Brannen Brothers?
I asked about the cutaway because I have one of Skip’s high D flutes, which has such a thing.
I don’t know about the Brannen Brothers, Cork, but it was when Chris was located in Concord, MA.
My recollection is that it was quite a bit later than 1980-1983; it was more like 1990-1993 that I remember Chris and Skip working on fife designs together, and I think Skip then used the experience he gained in fife-making to start making flutes on his own, I think Ralph Sweet may have provided Skip with some help in the design and/or equipment department as well. Around that time Chris was stringing flutes for Brannen at his shop in Concord and also making his own whistles and developing his Boehm flute design. I met Chris around 1984 or 1985 and I think he had only started to make whistles a few years earlier. The cutaway is something Chris liked to do; he did that on an old German flute he restored for me, and it made the flute much more responsive in the second octave. I bought a Healy flute in 1995 or 1996, and he hadn’t been making them for very long then.
Hi Brad,
I got this info on Skip’s web site, on the “Resume” page.
Ah right, I do remember Skip doing some work for Chris on whistles in the early days…I was just referring to the fife and flute development work, which I believe happened quite a few years later.
Brad,
Did you check out the Resume page on Skip’s site? The Healy Flute Co. began in 1993, so I think he had to have started making flutes way earlier than 1990-93 to get them up to par to start the H. Flute Co.. Also, I would think that Skip, himself, provided the info on his web site, that the dates and such, should be right.
Ah, thanks for the correction and the purrrty pic.
P.S. As per your avatar. I once had a cat that loved Bock Beer! >
Impressive! But if you begin noticing this or this or this, it might be time for an intervention.
That makes sense. Brannen Brothers flute makers got started back in the later seventies, in Woburn, MA, not all that far from Concord.
Cork,
Is it Skip’s Piccolo you have? six holes or ten?
Mine is a six hole. In the world of Boehm flutes it would be a piccolo, but as a wood flute I just call it a high D.
Actually, it appears to be cylinder bore throughout, so I suppose that it’s technically a fife.
Earplugs recommended!
Cork,
How do you like it? Did you ever try the 10-hole? Now, a fife is higher and shriller than a piccolo. On the piano, with middle C as C4, is the range your piccolo covers, D5 to D7? Then, his regular D flute would be D4 to D6?
The paragraph below is from Skip’s web site about the bore of his piccolos and fifes.
Fifes & Piccolos
Healy fifes & piccolos are a radical departure from the accepted style of fife design. Healy fifes & piccolos feature a parabolic bore in head joint which (at the body) opens up to a cylindrical bore to the foot. This design allows the compression to be created in the head joint with the airflow then traveling smoothly down a cylindrical body. This design creates a full sound through the complete playing range of the instrument which gives the fifes a very powerful sound from the lowest to the highest notes. This added volume also helps when several fifes are used to play arranged harmonies allowing all the voices to heard equally.
No. Piccolos are an 8ve above the flute. The standard Bb fife is a minor third lower than the piccolo. Fifes in other keys, (e.g. C, C#) would still be (slightly) lower than the standard D piccolo. Piccolos, whether simple or Bohm system, conoid or Bohm bore, have a nominal playing tessitura of 3 8ves, just like a flute. Simple system and keyless ones would normally only go to their top A, however. There have been piccolos in Eb/D# and even F above the normal orchestral D, mostly simple system ones for marching band use together with other Band Flutes (sometimes referred to as “fifes”). All these band flutes and piccolos share the same tessitura of 3 or nearly 3 8ves, based on their fundamental 6-finger note. I don’t know very much about the original historic Swiss fifes from the C15th/C16th. The “true fifes” in the American Colonial style have an all-cylinder bore, are relatively narrow-bored in relation to their length which promotes the efficiency of the upper 8ves at the expense of the fundamental one, where, so I have read (little direct personal experience) they are rather weak: they are apparently normally not played in the fundamental octave and may be, perhaps, pushed somewhat higher, into the lower regions of their 4th 8ve. None of this would make them “higher” than a standard D piccolo.
(Note: I have used trad/band terminology for pitch-naming throughout this post, not orchestral/museum terminology which would name all of them a tone lower.)
Okay, Jem, 
I haven’t studied music in over 25 years…and it was piano I took. I’m getting mixed up which octaves these are starting in, so, that being said, can you tell me on the piano, where the Irish flute, the fife and the piccolo each start, in comparison to middle C (C4), not to each other?