I have been playing Boehm quite alot lately and have of course been going through the motions of trying and buying various flutes, I have pretty much found my match, but you still look, thats when I came across this flute at MIR in the Uk, phoned them today and got the guy to give me a run down, basically it has no makers name, the build quality according to the helpful sales chap is very good, he felt that it had no real age to it, it has a small chip on the very top of the headjoint and a filled crack as well, but what is quite strange, to me anyway is that it is a Boehm flute, that has the standard looking pin mounted keys on the main body mixed with block mounted keys also, and the foot joint has all block mounted keys for the low C and c sharp, the guy said it was all definatly the same flute color of wood and fittings all match, he wasn’t sure of the wood type, the keys are nickel silver,pads are leather and in great shape and it plays well, have a look see what you make of it I though I would post it here as it sort of half Boehm/simple system, and it all looks intentional, I have seen flutes with block mounted keys that have had pin mounted keys added at a later date.
Definitely not a Boehm, not with those F-naturals. Could be a Radcliff, but hard to tell, as the picture display system doesn’t work too well with my Flash 10 (site looks for Flash version 6). Might be some other hybrid. No maker’s mark on it?
Definitely not Radcliff. Without a better pic of the whole flute it’s hard to get a clear view, but from what I can see it looks to me like a fairly typical example of the many 2nd half C19th hybrids that abounded in Britain. It appears to be a normal “Simple System” on a Boehm tube with rod-axle mounted keys for the main 3 fingers of each hand to allow Siccama-like corrected tone-hole placement. Such flutes were sometimes marketed as “Siccama” or as “Pratten”. Nothing terribly exciting about it, though looks nice quality and well done-up. I think the vendor is right that it is an integral original flute, not a frankenflute. However, I’d lay high odds it’s High Pitch! One would need some measurements and/or a sound sample to ascertain that, but most of these things that I have come across have been HP as they are from that era of British flute-making.
he said it plays with a lovely sound, this could as you say be a high pitched sound, they are asking £295, which I suppose for a collector wouldn’t be bad, the pics are a bit limiting, and not seeing the whole flute as one dosen’t help, I asked him to e-mail me some more pics this morning, but he just sent the same link, I not after buying it, I was just intrigued by the mix of block and pin mounts on a flute with no name.
