Tipple Wedge

Doug_Tipple · Post by **Doug_Tipple** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 1:48 pm

To answer Kate's question, the presence of a wedge in the headjoint will slightly change the tuning of the flute. One-piece, non-tunable flutes will play about 20 cents flat with the wedge, although the intonation of the upper end of the second octave will be greatly improved. Of course, with tunable flutes you can adjust the flute back up to pitch by moving the headjoint in slightly. So if absolute pitch is not a big concern, for example, you are not playing with others who are on pitch, then the wedge works nicely in a one-piece, non-tunable flute, in my opinion.

I think Glauber's gluing method should work easily. I had just never thought of doing it that way. I think that a very small drop of white glue in the center of the curved surface of the wedge should be enough to secure the wedge in place.

bang · Post by **bang** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 4:05 pm

on my black Tipple D, the wedge rests on it's edges, and doesn't quite touch the side of the flute in the middle. the black pvc has a slightly smaller inner diameter than the white according to Doug, but it may be a good idea in any case to check how well the curvature of wedge and flute match at the open end before glueing.

as long as i'm here, i find the wedge to correct the pitch of the 2nd octave A & B notes quite nicely. there seems to be a small trade off on the 2nd octave G, which seems easy to overblow sharp. it needs just a bit less air with the wedge.

tonally, my impression is that the wedge gives a harder reedy sound when using a tighter embouchure. a tight embouchure without the wedge has a bit more of a hollow reediness. softer & airier blows seem not to be much different for me.

like glauber, i imagine that the wedge makes a cylindrical flute more like a tapered head Boehm flute. (it's interesting to note that 4 players on the Wooden Flute Obsession 1 & 2 cds play Boehm style flutes, 2 silver & 2 wooden.)

:-) /dan

glauber · Post by **glauber** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 4:42 pm

By the way (i could find out, but i'm lazy), is the wedge's Fajardo the same Fajardo who was a famous Cuban flutist?

José Antonio Fajardo

(Really, i just thought this was such a cool pic that it needed to be shown.)

JessieK · Post by **JessieK** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 5:01 pm

Doug_Tipple wrote:One-piece, non-tunable flutes will play about 20 cents flat with the wedge, although the intonation of the upper end of the second octave will be greatly improved.

So, couldn't a one-piece non-tunable flute be made (by you, or by anyone who might attempt to make one) to accomodate a wedge, by shortening the tube enough to make it 20 cents sharper, and then drilling the finger holes?

Doug_Tipple · Post by **Doug_Tipple** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 8:51 pm

Jessie, like Glauber, I am lazy, as well. I hardly ever sell a non-tunable flute anymore, so I haven't gotten around to adjusting it for a wedge. I just play mine flat and be done with it.

Glauber, the wedge patent owner was Raul Fajardo, probably a physicist in a basement lab in Santa Monica, CA. But that is just a guess.

glauber · Post by **glauber** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 9:16 pm

I did a Google on Raul Fajardo, and the first page came back with: "Raul Fajardo, a Mexican journalist and photographer, graduated from the University of Voronezh in Russia."

Quite the Renaissance man, Senor Fajardo! http://www.controlaguerra.it/mostra/fajardo.htm

Adding "flute" or "wedge" to the query didn't bring anything relevant. Interesting, the Internet hasn't been kind to our hero.

Googlism for: raul fajardo
Sorry, Google doesn't know enough about raul fajardo yet.

Speaking of which, did you see Jose Fajardo's flute? It looks a lot like one of the modern keyless "Irish" flutes, doesn't it? But i'm sure it's a 4-key French flute with short foot. You can more or less see the diagonal G# key near his index finger.

glauber · Post by **glauber** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 9:29 pm

The files area in the Yahoo FLUTEMAKERS group has Fajardo's patent for his wedge. There i see the name is spelled (of course) Raoul. Now Google starts bringing stuff up. It seems he (or someone with the same name) wrote a book on Cuban flute. The Dayton Miller collection has a couple of Fajardo headjoints. He seems to have written an article on the "Early Music" periodic about embouchure.

And that's it. Still not much information. Assuming that all these hits are for the same person, he seems to have been a flute theorist, inventor and headjoint maker.

The 2 headjoints in the Dayton Miller collection are worth a look. They're plastic! and very interesting, sort of retro-futuristic looking. Here's a small picture:

KateG · Post by **KateG** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 2:07 pm

Jessie, like Glauber, I am lazy, as well. I hardly ever sell a non-tunable flute anymore, so I haven't gotten around to adjusting it for a wedge. I just play mine flat and be done with it.

Since I tend to play flat at the best of times, I think I'll keep my one piece as is, and save my pennies for a tunable model. Who knows, at the rate Doug keeps improving his flutes, his early models may turn out to be collectors items! (Although the value of mine as a collectable has been compromised by the black tape that hides the tooth marks put there by my dog when she was a puppy. It was sticking out of a bag when we were packing to go on vacation and she had a severe case of separation anxiety...even tho we were taking her with us. Fortunately, she only scratched the sticky paper and did not hurt any of the working parts)

bildio · Post by **bildio** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 3:00 pm

Inventors: Fajardo; Raoul J. (P.O. Box 5782, Pasadena, CA 91107)
Appl. No.: 711157
Filed: August 3, 1976
Patent Number: 4,058,046

Abstract
A cylindrical head joint has an internal cross-section that tapers down from a cylindrical shape at the tenon to a non-cylindrical shape at the embouchure end by means of a wedge internally bonded to the cylinder. The relative tuning of the three octaves of the flute can be achieved by varying the position of the wedge either rotationally or longitudinally inside the cylinder. The laborious method of tapering the head by forced shrinking of a cylindrical tube is thus avoided and a superior tone quality is achieved because the air jet that enters the embouchure hole hits a non-cylindrical wall which has a favorable effect on transient sounds and harmonics.

You can read the entire patent by going to the following web site, and entering the patent number 4,058,046 .

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm

Bill

Tipple/fipple Flutist · Mon Oct 25, 2004 5:20 pm

If one goes to the site
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm
submitted by Bill and then selects images a diagram is hsown of the design which mirrors The wedge design.

I found most interesting the following:

4. The flute head joint according to claim 1 above, further comprising a pin that is secured to the wedge and extends through the wall to provide selective tuning of the head joint by enabling selective rotational positioning of the wedge about the central axis of the hollow cylinder.

This would seem to suggest the wedge was abutted to the cork but had the ability to rotate in the tube by means of a pin. "enabling selective rotational positioning of the wedge about the central axis of the hollow cylinder" would mean that optimal placement would be above the central axis for this particular wedge.
I have been playing around with the placement of the wedge since I am in the minority of players who have played better without the wedge. This lead to me moving it about in the cylinder itself and noting differences. I seemed to have best results when the wedge was placed according to the above quoted material. This is why I haven't permanently affixed the wedge yet, I'm waiting for the some feedback in this area.
Anyone else played around with this?

glauber · Post by **glauber** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 6:06 pm

I haven't played around with it, but if you check the 2 headjoints that are available in the Dayton Miller collection (see my post above), you can see, more or less, how it works.

Here's a detail from one of them (in 2 magnifications):

You can see the "pin", and how the stopper and wedge assembly is able to rotate a few degrees. You can see the amount of adjustment he had in mind was fairly small. You can also see the texture of the plastic material he used. Very weird.

Doug_Tipple · Post by **Doug_Tipple** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 6:35 pm

The abstract for the Fajardo wedge is confusing, in my opinion. It mentions that the wedge is internally bonded to the headjoint, and in the next sentence it mentions being able to rotate the wedge to tune notes in the third octave.

The only photographs of the Fajardo-style wedge that I have seen was a result of his commercial collaboration with the Armstrong Flute Company. If I am not mistaken, it depicted the stopper with O-rings and the wedge as a one-piece device, with the stopper extending out the end of the flute so that it was easy to either move it in or out, or to rotate it to make the adjustments that he mentions in the patent discussion.

In these edited remarks (after seeing the photos that Glauber has posted), I think, if I remember correctly from an ebay sale, that the Armstrong -Fajardo headjoint was wood with an aluminum stopper-wedge. It was designed as a headjoint for a silver flute, to create a more Baroque sound. I understand that the Armstrong-Fajardo headjoint was not a commercial success.

The design of the Tipple-Fajardo wedge is an adaptation of Fajardo's original wedge design. The main difference between the two wedge designs, other than dimensional differences, is that my wedge design has a tapered concave surface facing upward in the flute, whereas that surface in the Fajardo design is completely flat.

I am unable to answer the question as to which orientation of the wedge will yield the best results. I suspect that there is no one answer to this question.

glauber · Post by **glauber** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 7:18 pm

Oh, it may or may not be interesting to know that the other headjoint in the Dayton Miller collection looks very similar to the one i showed above, but the stopper on that one is fixed (doesn't rotate).

wolvy · Post by **wolvy** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 5:51 pm

I did some "wedgie" experiments today. I took my grey PVC Eb tuneable Tipple flute and played it both with and without the Tipple wedge in it. My subjective take on it is this: the wedge makes the 2nd octave easier to play but makes the 1st octave a tad weaker. The bottom note of the flute does not seem to honk as well as it does without the wedge in it.

I then did the same with Daryl's D tuneable white PVC Tipple flute. The results on the D flute were more dramatic. The wedge helped both octaves (IMHO). I liked the effect.

I wonder if the wedge needs to be a tad bit smaller for the Eb flute.

- Tom

Stuporman · Post by **Stuporman** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 11:23 pm

I used much the same method as Glauber, except I glued it permanently. If I hadn't glued it permanently I would have already lost it. I did it in 2 parts. First, I put a small drop of super glue on the back of the wedge, and slid it upside-down on the opposite wall from where I wanted to stick it. I flipped it over to about 45 degrees from the point facing directly opposite the embouchure hole, towards me as I play it. I used a disposable chopstick from the chinese restaurant to hold it down until set. The chopsick has a good taper to hold it. I then put a small drop on the end of the chopstick and used it to get the glue under the tip of the wedge, and uesd the other square end of the chopstick to hold down the smaller tip of the wedge until set. I didn't like the idea of having the gap there permanently between the wedge and the headpiece. I put a small piece off a leather chamois cloth used for drying the car on the end of another chopstick and used it to get rid of any excess. It works well. Nice flute, by the way.

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