Tweaking a Pakistan made flute?

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LimuHead
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Tweaking a Pakistan made flute?

Post by LimuHead »

Hi flauters!

Straight to the point:

Has anyone here tried (or heard of someone who tried) their hand at tweaking the ubiquitous cheap Patistnan-made flutes found on the interwebs?

Some background:

I know that they are largely unplayable as purchased, but wonder if they can be tweaked to make them better.

I grew up in Hawaii and used to make bamboo flutes for my own fun while hiking in the mountains. I'd just use my Swiss Army knife's saw and reamer. They were always playable but I was young and just having fun, so I didn't focus on intonation as much. The flutes were all tossed back to the forest after the hike.

Now that I'm considerably older and have much more experience as a multi-instrumetalist and avid flautist, I'm thinking I might be able to make a playable flute out of one of the cheapo Pakistan flutes.

The keyless flutes I play:

Casey Burns Folk Flute, a Shannon, a Forbes delrin, and a 3 piece Tipple (with both regular and lip plate headjoints).

So if anyone has tried this, or has heard of someone who has tried, I'd love to hear about the experience.

Thanks!
Aldon
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Re: Tweaking a Pakistan made flute?

Post by paddler »

I'm not sure if this would fall under your definition of "tweaking", but I've tried making some quite extensive modifications to one that
I bought used, for next to no cost, on eBay. First, I used my Pratten reamer to completely reshape the bore. This made a big difference
right away. Then I made some minor modifications to tone holes, undercutting in the appropriate places to improve tuning balance. This
worked quite well, but only because the tone holes happened to be in the right locations to begin with. In fact, I only did this work because
I measured all the relevant parameters and determined that there was hope ahead of time. You can't really know this until you have the flute in
hand, of course!

The embouchure cut was poor, and too large, but the flute played quite well after reaming and tone hole tweaks. Ideally, though, it would
have had an embouchure insert and a new embouchure cut to make it play really well, but I didn't do that.

The other issue was that the keys were poorly made and fitted. I spent a long time tweaking the springs and replacing key pads, and eventually got
it working quite well, aside from one troublesome and unpredictable leak which was due to the key slot for the short F key having been cut
poorly. Specifically, it was tapered and slightly too large, such that the key wobbled, sometimes leaking and sometime not, all depending on
how you may or may not brush against it while playing. Uh! After some tricky shimming I got it working moderately well, but I suspect these
kinds of problems are common, and they are horrible to deal with. Fitting keys well requires a high degree of skill and practice, and is one
of the reasons why keys cost so much on a good flute.

Surprisingly, the wood was actually very nice on the flute I had. It was probably African Blackwood, but I'm not 100% sure. I had it for several years
and it was very stable. I don't think this is a feature you could rely on though. I think I was just lucky with that one.

In the end I got a reasonable 5-key flute for my efforts, but it was a lot of work, required a flute maker's workshop and tools, including appropriate
reamers, and was definitely not the kind of work the average player would want to undertake. The time I put in would have been better spent making
a flute from scratch, in the sense that I would have had much more control over the final outcome, but I did it mostly to satisfy my curiosity.

I did originally wonder if there might be an opportunity to apply predictable and repeatable tweaks in order to make some of these cheap, unplayable,
flutes into inexpensive keyed starter flutes for folks who can't afford a new keyed flute. But I think the real issue is one of consistency, or lack thereof.
If you bought a whole load of these flutes, there is no guarantee that they would all be identical to each other, or even very close. I suspect it would be
a real crap shoot in terms of what you would have as a starting point. This would mean that the work required to get each particular flute into decent
playing condition would likely vary from one flute to the next, ranging in difficulty from being fairly straightforward to totally impossible, with a median
point somewhere around "troublesome".

Overall, I'd say that it is not worth the hassle, unless you are doing it purely as a learning exercise and are happy to have a high chance of
ending up with an FLO that doesn't play well.

The other side of this is to recognize that the devil is in the details, and making a good flute, especially a keyed one, is much more difficult than it
seems. The cost of the materials, such as the wood, head lining, metal for keys, is relatively insignificant compared to the labor cost. When you
try to tweak an inexpensive keyed flute you are really getting no more than the raw materials, and they will likely not be high quality (poorly seasoned
wood, poorly plated brass rings, etc) and may have been irreparably damaged by the original maker.
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Re: Tweaking a Pakistan made flute?

Post by LimuHead »

Thank you for the detailed response, Paddler.

That's just the sort of info I was looking for!

Aldon
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Re: Tweaking a Pakistan made flute?

Post by Jayhawk »

I tried it without reamers (fine tuning the holes, undercutting, etc.), and the tuning improved but the flute still sucked. The embouchure was way too big on mine as well and I didn't have the skills nor the equipment to put in an insert of any sort...same with re-reaming the bore. It was a waste of $45 (this was quite a few years ago...about 20 if my memory is correct). I sold mine to a bar as wall décor, so I almost made out even.

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Re: Tweaking a Pakistan made flute?

Post by Latticino »

As I've previously noted, the keyless one I got was so poorly manufactured that one of the tennons was too large in diameter to go into the associated socket (with all the thread removed). I suppose you could fix this with a lathe (or carefully by sanding), but it does go to illuminate the inconsistent quality of the build on these.
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Re: Tweaking a Pakistan made flute?

Post by Terry McGee »

I seem to remember (and this might be a gross libel!) that Mendocino (?) maker Rod Cameron used to upgrade Pakistani-made flutes to useable status. I hope I have that right! Assertions like that are arguably actionable under law...

And I have upgraded a few over the years on request from disappointed owners, and enjoyed neither the process or the result, though the owners seemed happier than they had been. Upgraded from perfectly useless to marginally tolerable would be my reading. I don't like marginally tolerable in flutes. I want party animal.

In late 2019, I was contacted by a Pakistani company in Sailkot who were painfully aware their product was looked down upon worldwide. I suggested that if they sent me a sample I would get back to them with my thoughts on what they could do to make it better. They sent me four different flutes, all of which were horrible, but all in different ways. I asked them where they got the models from and they responded they weren't sure - they had been making them for a very long time and nobody knew anything about them. I was still wondering what I should suggest to them when the bushfires struck here on New Year's Eve. All of our comms went out for some time, and I've never had the inspiration or stamina to go back to them since.

I was reminded of the old Irish joke about the tourist who had become lost somewhere in the West. How do I get to Dublin, he asked a local. Ah, well, said the local. If I wanted to be going to Dublin, I wouldn't be leaving from here.

And that was my feeling about their four flutes. If I wanted to make a flute for Irish music, I wouldn't start from there.
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Re: Tweaking a Pakistan made flute?

Post by Peter Duggan »

Terry McGee wrote: Wed Dec 07, 2022 3:34 am I seem to remember (and this might be a gross libel!) that Mendocino (?) maker Rod Cameron used to upgrade Pakistani-made flutes to useable status. I hope I have that right! Assertions like that are arguably actionable under law...
I thought he reamed out plastic Aulos baroque flutes. But maybe he did both?
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Re: Tweaking a Pakistan made flute?

Post by Jayhawk »

Rod did remake Pakistani flutes at one point. He must have had the patience of a saint or found a supplier who made "better" flutes...otherwise, it seems like it would have been easier just to make a keyless from scratch.

Maybe he did Aulos as well, but I don't recall that.

Eric
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Re: Tweaking a Pakistan made flute?

Post by LimuHead »

Thank you all for your responses!

It looks like this kind of project would be a waste of time & money.

How are the wooden cases that come with these flutes?

Are they equally as useless as the flute?

It might be worth getting one of the $30 FSOs just for the flute case.

Thanks again,
Aldon
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Re: Tweaking a Pakistan made flute?

Post by GreenWood »

The cases are not the right shape and the seams leak air, but they allow you complete choice on the placement of the embouchure and toneholes .
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