I’m sure someone here’s got several thousand dollars to waste…
http://www.lopatinflutes.com/altoflute.html
What a wonderful idea. For anyone having square fingers, it seems that square finger holes would be just the thing you would have dreamed of. And for only $10,200 for the basic silver model (gold flute @ $28,000), the Square One alto flute is well within your budget, especially if a close family member recently won the lottery. I am not a skin flint, if you know what I mean, but instead of the Square One alto flute, I have my eye on the basic Pearl alto flute with a curved headjoint for a mere $1,500.
How very odd. How very, uh, square.
I’d rather have a Tipple.
Dale
Lenny actually makes very nice flutes (I’ve seen them in person), square holes and all. He happens to be a long time friend of Chris Abell, (they have shared shop space, on more than one occasion, I believe), which gives some indication of the caliber of flutemaker Mr. L is…
Loren
interesting… the reasoning behind the square tone holes is here.
i don’t think it would work for simple-system though…
I think there was on eBay sometime ago an “Abell-Lopatin” flute, made of wood, with square holes. Very odd, very square and very black 
I would have liked to have seen that one. When I visited Chris’ shop about 3 years ago, Lenny was there working on his own(metal) flutes but I didn’t realize they were collaborating on instruments as well, cool.
Loren
I think I remember seeing that. It was a while ago. I stick with my Bleazey.
I get the argument for square holes, but wouldn’t it be better still if multiple holes were distributed around the circumference, as the square hole is on one side only, surely some sort of gradient is caused. It would make pad making a bit tricky tho!
Rob
Wouldn’t that be an interesting engineering challenge.
Seems more like rocket science than flutemaking though.
i’m going to buy one of each because i can’t make up my mind, silver or gold? i don’t know. i guess i’ll cover all my bases.
i can understand the square hole and congratulate the person who thought that up. but what about a triangle shaped hole? wouldn’t that have the advantage of a flat edge with less cut out? or a rhombus? i’d like to know if they thought of those.
I do think it’s an interesting concept, but with my playing it’s far more the way the air is going into the flute that’s the problem, not the way it leaves it.