It's time for a change......

[Ben Shaffer]

List,
I may be out of place but here it goes......
I think there is alot of "butt kissing" of all the various Flute makers by people on this list.
Please let's get real, shouldn't they be catering to the purchasers of the Instruments? We wait over a year to get an Instrument from these makers, and pander about how good these makers and their Instruments are.
I would love to see a Japanese or Chinese Musical Instrument maker( or American) take these Instruments and make copies of them. Let's face it they could make them as well as any of our current makers, make them cheaper and have them available for us where we order them and they come on demand thru the mail within 2 or 3 weeks.
If you played the Flute in the 18th century there were many more Flutes available when you needed them, without a wait. Make no mistake about it the high quality Rudal Rose Instruments were more large production line than one man shops. Other Musical Instruments are made by large companies rather than than 1 man shops, the quality of these large manufactures is excellent
. I may be pipe dreaming though, we may just be too small a market..... any opinions?
Mr. Fandango
Ben

[crookedtune]

. I may be pipe dreaming though, we may just be too small a market..... any opinions?
Mr. Fandango
Ben

I agree with this part.

[Loren]

I agree in certain respects Ben: R&R and other producers of the time did things differently, and in more quantity, than today's makers of simply system flutes. However they had a much, much bigger market, which makes a huge difference.

Could equally good flutes be made more cheaply somewhere else where the labor costs were significantly lower? Certainly, however I just can't imagine there'd be enough profit in it for any chinese investors to be interested, and those pakistani flutes aren't taking the trad music world by storm.......


I do think the waiting times are a bit outrageous, but you have to remember, most of the guys making flutes today, either learned on their own, or in a one person shop, so they wouldn't know the ins and outs of volume small scale production (Bryan Byrne and Seth Gallagher being the only exceptions, other than myself, that I know of), so there's the issue of learning a different mode of production, because one simply can't increase production by 3-5+ times in terms of quantity, by doing things the same way that one makes a single flute at a time. (Terry McGee uses CNC, so that's another way to get at it, but then there's more machinery and programing to be learned) Add to that the task of taking on and training additional employee's (training being a separate skill), dealing with all the tax and associated issues, the personality issues, the reliability issues, the shop space issues, and so on...... Well, at the end of the day, many flute makers choose to make flutes because they enjoy the laid back lifestyle, and changing your whole way of doing business, hiring and firing employees, dealing with worker's comp, and all these other things, don't tend to make for a very relaxing life, if you see what I mean.

I just don't think the motivation is there for most of the current makers to take this path (although it seem P.O. might be going this direction to a certain degree), and as I mentioned, I don't feel the market is big enough that larger fish will be interested in making the really top end stuff. It would not however surprise me to see a Moeck, Mollenhaur, or some similarly large company start knocking out mid priced folk flutes one day.



Loren

[Wormdiet]

List,
I may be out of place but here it goes......
I think there is alot of "butt kissing" of all the various Flute makers by people on this list.
Please let's get real, shouldn't they be catering to the purchasers of the Instruments? We wait over a year to get an Instrument from these makers, and pander about how good these makers and their Instruments are.
I would love to see a Japanese or Chinese Musical Instrument maker( or American) take these Instruments and make copies of them. Let's face it they could make them as well as any of our current makers, make them cheaper and have them available for us where we order them and they come on demand thru the mail within 2 or 3 weeks.
If you played the Flute in the 18th century there were many more Flutes available when you needed them, without a wait. Make no mistake about it the high quality Rudal Rose Instruments were more large production line than one man shops. Other Musical Instruments are made by large companies rather than than 1 man shops, the quality of these large manufactures is excellent
. I may be pipe dreaming though, we may just be too small a market..... any opinions?
Mr. Fandango
Ben

My impression was that a good part of the wait associated with a flute is the wood seasoning process after it's been reamed. I'm sure Loren could clarfiy. And that's an issue because [just a theory here] flutemakers work on tight margins and cannot afford to make new instruments on speculation. Especially because we all want our flutes customized for grip, embouchure styles, etc. etc. With something like a CB Folk Flute or an M & E, or other "entry level" flutes, the demand is steady enough that there are flutes made before anyone orders them. Not true of "higher end" flutes.

I do wonder if some of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy combined with the placebo effect - if we hear that a certain maker has a two year waiting list, do we automatically think "Geez, these must be great flutes" simply because of the delay?

All things being equal, I'd rather have a lot of one-man shops doing their own thing than a Yamaha-type operation that makes good stuff, but crowds out the market.

[Sillydill]

It is my perception that the market for Irish Flutes is still rising! (This is Good!) But exact figures are unknown.

It would not be a problem for say Aulos to knock out a couple hundred flutes a year (of reasonable quality).

But, tuning remains a hands on task best performed by a skilled technician (like Jon C., Doug Tipple, et al....)

The CAMAC flute that I had appeared to be factory made. Turned on a CNC lathe and no undercutting of the embouchure nor toneholes. It achieved "reasonable" tuning, but certainly could have been better.

Inexpensive, accessable Irish Flutes would certainly entice more players into the field!

All the Best!

Jordan

[chas]

There are inexpensive instruments available with no wait. Ralph Sweet has been in business for at least a couple of decades and always has instruments on hand (AFAIK). Burns folk flutes, Tipples, M&E, Dixon, I think they all have instruments available with little or no wait, decent instruments, somewhere between not too dear and inexpensive. Some get great press around here, some simply good.

But I don't think anyone thinks any of them are competitors to the Olwells and Murrays of the world (among quite a few others). Those folks are almost magical.

Speaking of that, Rod Cameron at one time tweaked inexpensive Asian flutes -- does he still do that, and does anyone else? Other than the quality of the wood, working that way pretty much puts the grunt work in the hands of less-expensive folks and the artistry in the hands of the artist.

[Loren]

My impression was that a good part of the wait associated with a flute is the wood seasoning process after it's been reamed. I'm sure Loren could clarfiy.

No, that's actually not an issue - new makers simply skip the long seasoning steps once they've drilled the pilot hole, and established makers should have wood seasoning at various stages of production. I don't know of any makers who actually sit around doing little or nothing while wood is seasoning - I'm not poking fun here, just saying.


No, the wait is mostly due to the fact that when you work alone and you make one instrument at a time, it takes freakin' forever to make 50 flutes. This is largely because it's not just the flute making time, it's ordering the wood, cork, cork cement, lathe oil, replacement end mills and drill bits. Then there's machine maintanance, and repair - Your lathe or mill is always going to bust right when it's crunch time and you're past due on a deadline bringing everything screeching to a halt until you can order replacement parts and do the repair yourself. And so on.

And then there's responding to customer emails and phone calls, which kills a couple of hours a day.


So, for one person, an 8 hour day probably means, on average, 5 hours of flute making, if that person is disciplined......

The only ways I know of to speed things up significantly are:

1) Add more staff, and deal with all the associated expenses and problems. And let's not forget, that not everyone has the same aptitude for this sort of work. Unfortunately many people do not, and some of those folks are a danger both to themselves, and to others around the shop.

2) Automate via extensive use of CNC machinery, which can be expensive up front, and daunting with regards to having to learn to program.

3) Completely change the way you approach production - make instruments in batches of 25-100 instruments at a time. This is a much less "fun" way to work, but gives the maker the ability, to produce far more instruments in a year than he would otherwise be capable of. Why? Because you save a ton of time on machine set-up and tear down between operations. This method, if executed properly, also yields highly consistent results - for example, once you're set up to drill tone holes, every single tone hole in that batch is going to end up in exactly the same place on each separate body. Just don't screw up though, because if you drill the hole wrong on one, you're going to ruin them all.......


For comparative purposes, I'm guessing that most of the flute makers we talk about here, the ones that do the same quality work we did at VH, I'd say most of those makers turn out, or could turn, out about 50 keyless flutes a year by themselves, if they were only doing keyless flutes, so about 1 per week. With an additional, trained, employee they might, might be able to crank out a hundred a year, but I have my doubts. By contrast, Patrick Von Huene and I completed nearly 200 instruments a year for 2 years running while I was there as the only other shop employee. Plus we completed several hundred repair/restoration jobs each year in addition to the new instruments we made. Don't get me wrong, I'm not tooting my own horn, it was the production system, that allowed us to do those quantities. To be fair, Pat and I worked a lot of 6 day weeks, often 50 hours a week, with very little (read "no") bullsh#t time in the shop, it was head down, balls to the wall all day working 98% of the time, but still, recorders are more time consuming and complicated to make than flutes, so that easily evens out the hour difference.


But again, all those things don't make for the relaxed, carefree, "artists" lifestyle that so many makers seem to enjoy - no 3-4 months a year travelling around chasing skirts in Ireland while the apprentice botches things up at home, and the like. No shutting down for the summer cause it's too hot in the workshop. And so on. Just doesn't fit the artisian lifestyle. And hey, in all fairness, so folks don't misunderstand me, the pay and benefits (what benefits) really aren't that good as an instrument maker, so your perks are having that sort of lifestyle, so why not enjoy it because, quite frankly, your customers will wait. Which takes us back around to the beginning.


Loren

[Ben Shaffer]

I don't think it would be unreasonable for companies like Bundy, Artley, Geminhert, etc to look at the best Irish Flutes and start making Irish Flute models. Also no slight against our current Flute makers, they are Craftsmen and just don't have the vision or skill sets to carry out what the larger Musical Instrument companies can do. Not that our current Irish Flute makers don't make wonderful Instruments because they do, but any of the major Woodwind instrument makers could within several years make Instruments that would be equal to any of premier makers,let's face it. I realize the independent Craftmen are wonderful at what they do, but I can tell you the big musical Instrument manufacters can train people and turn out wonderful Craftmen as well. You can have people that are excellent at any one point of the making of an Instrument, but collectively they can turn out an Instrument that will be just as good as if one person makes it.
We do have a number of Flute makers that make Flutes in sizeable numbers , but again the quality is not that of the premier manufacters of Musical Instruments of the world such as Artley, Deford ,Yamaha etc. and they are still pretty much small operations.
I realize that our finest Irish Flute makers like their current life style and way of doing things, but as a musician that is neither here nor their to my needs and I hate to say it but I have no strong allgence to solo craftmen. If a solo craftman can provide me with an Irish Flute on demand I'll buy from him or her, but if the big companies are the only one's to do so I'll go with them.Seasoned wood issue would just not be a problem for these big Companies.
If they did start making these Instruments it's not inconceivable that it would greatly expand the Irish Music scene.
I can see it now Irish Sessions with 10 or more Flute players, hell we could rise and be the dominate Instrument at sessions.
Really, my point is I can walk into a store and get a computer, TV,Car, any any other musical Instrument, why not a damn Irish Flute !?
I make not be making any fans with Irish Instrument makers and players, but there you have it......
Mr. Fandango

[Loren]

Well, when the market for wooden flutes becomes the same as some of those items you mentioned, no doubt it'll happen. In the mean time, Bundy, Artley, Toshiba, and Ford would simply laugh at the numbers. Okay, forget about Ford, they're about to go under. Perhaps you can convince VW to make you a nice little wooden flute with a flower vase hanging off the long F block.


Loren

[Sillydill]

Bit of Trivia that I remember from Robert Bigio's website, he cites:

It was estimated in 1829 that one man in ten in London played the flute. Players, teachers, composers and makers competed for their share of the vast market for anything to do with the flute.

[ChaplainBlake]

Speaking of pipe dreaming...ever seen what a full set of Froment pipes go for? Oh yeah, and that with a 14 year wait. Guess it is all relative, eh?

[BrendanB]

If they did start making these Instruments it's not inconceivable that it would greatly expand the Irish Music scene.
I can see it now Irish Sessions with 10 or more Flute players, hell we could rise and be the dominate Instrument at sessions.

Heaven help us

[AaronMalcomb]

The industry is just now picking up after a nearly 100 year hiatus and it's only doing so for a specialized market. Thankfully those involved in re-growing the industry are prioritizing quality over quantity. The supply does fall short of demand but because the market is made up largely of hobbyists that gap is rather inconsequential.

But if your really keen on this, Ben, then do the market research. Get the numbers for demand and what the cost would be to meet it and see if they add up to profit.

More is not necessarily better IMHO. I'm satisfied with it being an artisan market. I don't think it's "butt-kissing" and that term may be going a little far.

[Jon C.]

It is already being done. Here is the link:
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=34685

You kiss it, i'll bare it.

[Aerowhip]

OOoo - this topic got my blood moving. I can only think back to the last time I went to the muffler shop and dropped $500-600 on exhaust work, which took all of maybe 1-1/2 hours performed by someone with condiderably fewer years of practice and education than I (DVM). I'm the first to admit that exhaust work is something I don't care to do myself, and therefore I pay the cost with a pained smile, but I'd sure rather pass that money on to someone practicing the fine craftsmanship that comes with years of working on the skills of instrument making, and end up with something that doesn't rust out in a year or two.

This is not the first time that quality flutes have generated a demand greater than the supply -- some thirty years ago I was lucky enough to purchase a used Haynes flute from an older gentleman, and felt very lucky that I didn't have to go through the several years' wait-list that was in place at that time. More power to all you wonderful flute-making artisans out there. I for one am glad that you are able to make a living doing your fine work, and whole-heartedly support your need to charge a reasonable rate for your skills and time -- I hope there will be more of you, over time. Someone else can purchase the quantity versus quality trade off models if they want. There are plenty available on eBay!