I've had people inquire about McGee's Eccentric Head for his flutes. So.....
Here is a pic. of the eccentric head (best I could do):
The outside of the flute is a perfectly turned circle in profile (not elliptical at all); the bore is simply bored eccentric to the outer surface of the flute. Then the embouchure is cut through the thickest wall of the flute. But, both the bore and outer profile are concentric at the socket end.
This is a simple ingenious design. A professor of mine in graduate school (Civil Engineering) used to often use a phrase that I have always remembered:
One should always seek the simplest most elegant solution to a problem.
I believe that McGee has succeeded in accomplishing just that!
Tell us something.: I try my best to play the flute and pipes. I have been coming here for years and now are required to fill this out for an address change.
I just ordered a boxwood 5088 with an eccentric head from Mr. McGee and I can hardly wait until it get's here.
I promised I would not bug him, so I guess I'll have to content myself with talking about it with you fine people.
I agree it is an ingeniously simple solution to delivering a state of the art instrument in a traditional body.
Sillydill wrote:This is a simple ingenious design. A professor of mine in graduate school (Civil Engineering) used to often use a phrase that I have always remembered:
One should always seek the simplest most elegant solution to a problem.
I believe that McGee has succeeded in accomplishing just that!
The problem with Terry McGee and his exocentric bore is:
Did he do it because of eloquence
OR because he is lazy
AND is the difference between eloquent and lazy,
just one of those perspective things.
Or did he just like the name and need to come up with a use for it.
I have a McGee flute with this kind of head and at first I was worried that it would be difficult to pull the stopper in and out of when cleaning and oiling. I have found that this is not the case. The stopper is eccentric as well, so it is only a matter of getting it aligned and in it goes. No problem at all. I really like this design. It is like having a "stealth" taller chimney.
Call me stupid, but what advantage does this confer?
And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving - moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance. ('And I suppose,' thought Lucy, 'when trees dance, it must be a very, very country dance indeed.')
Tell us something.: Mostly producer of the Wooden Flute Obsession 3-volume 6-CD 7-hour set of mostly player's choice of Irish tunes, played mostly solo, on mostly wooden flutes by approximately 120 different mostly highly-rated traditional flute players & are mostly...
Deeper chimney while maintaining a traditional appearance. No taised lip plate, no thinning of the head, etc. However, I think the bulge that Jon C. was recently showing on a different thread is perfectly acceptable (U.S. footbal shaped).
Kevin Krell
International Traditional Music Society, Inc.
A non-profit 501c3 charity/educational public benefit corporation
Wooden Flute Obsession CDs (3 volumes, 6 discs, 7 hours, 120 players/tracks) https://www.worldtrad.org
How does the eccentric head perform when playing in comparison to a normal oval embouchure? Is it easier, louder, sweeter, more controllable, anything at all ?
Tom O'Farrell wrote:How does the eccentric head perform when playing in comparison to a normal oval embouchure? Is it easier, louder, sweeter, more controllable, anything at all ?
Er.. . . apples and oranges.
The eccentricity is in the shape of the bore (assymetrical from side to side). NOT the embouchure hole, which is more or less an independent variable.
One can get a Terry flute with a normal "improved ellipse" embouchure or a more modern "rounded rectangle." FOr EITHER embouchure style one can order the same Terry flute with a normal bore or an eccentric bore (Or a talentless boor, in my case.) Does that make sense?
Much of the standard, off-the-shelf pvc pipe that I use to make Irish flutes is not concentric. This presents somewhat of a problem in that you need to cut all of the pieces of any one flute out of the same piece of pipe, and after fashioning the tenon joints you need to rotate each section of the flute into proper allignment prior to drilling the holes.
I'm feeling rather stupid in that I never thought of using this non-concentricity to advantage. In the future I will be drilling the embouchure in the thickest part of the sidewall to allow for a deeper chimney on the blow hole. I think that this will help make the flutes easier to blow, especially for beginners.
OK let me re-phrase my question- How does a standard sized oval embouchure in an eccentric headjoint compare with the same embouchure in a normal flute headjoint.
I'm simply asking why would a person go for the eccentric and of course expect the person who answers to be experienced in both....if anybody is.
Basically the taller chimney on the embouchure helps to produce a better and more consistent tone. I don't have another McGee with the traditional Cylinder head, so I can't really directly compare. But I am very impressed with the tone of my McGee with the Eccentric head. However, it is also the only flute I've played with the Two-Semicircles type embouchure (another important variable).
I'll just quote McGee's website and let you decide for yourself:
The issue is this. In the traditional cylindrical head, the diameter of the head was limited to what was comfortable. Because the bore diameter was set, the wall thickness and therefore the embouchure chimney depth was defined automatically at one half the difference. Not quite enough for best tone development unfortunately. Still, it's the shape we know and love...
I have e-mailed actually a couple of makers about this. I had assumed the riser (chimney if you like) on my metal Boehm system flutes gave a taller and broader wall than wood flutes with the typical oval embouchure have and that this accounted for the much easier playability of the Boehm system flutes. But when you get down to actually measuring the two types of flute, my Marcus Hernon vs my Yamaha, and find out that the smaller diameter of the metal flutes plus their riser height gives a wall height of about 5mm and this is what my Marcus Hernon wood flute has anyway (wood flutes have larger diameters), then I am confounded. It must therefore be the larger opening and more square configuration of the Boehm system embouchures giving a broader wall that makes the difference not the wall height. Also walls on Boehm system are not undercut in the same way wood flutes often are, they are angled at about 8 degrees but present an even surface to blow on.
