FS: Rudall, Rose & Carte #6069 w/ extra Wilkes head on ebay

[daveogden]

Hi everyone, I've listed my Rudall #6069 with extra Chris Wilkes headjoint on ebay at $4850. If anyone here is interested, send me a PM, I have $4500. in the set and would like to recover that, I'd include shipping to you in that figure. Thanks! Here's the link:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/221141284119?ss ... 1555.l2649

[Akiba]

Now that is a beautiful looking and sounding flute. Brilliant.

[Steampacket]

Yes, a nice flute - all the best with the sale

[flutefry]

Dave's a straight up guy to deal with-you can buy with confidence from him. Looks like a lovely flute!

Hugh

[eilam]

yes, Dave is the greatest guy to deal with, very honest and considerate.
that's a very beautiful flute....sounds great as well.

[daveogden]

Thanks for your votes of confidence, you guys! I'm scrambling for funds at the moment (for another instrument, of course!), and if anyone here is interested in the flute, please get in touch, I'll lower the price a bit more! It's a good playing ca. 1854 Rudall, silver keys etc., and the extra Chris Wilkes head should be worth $1200 - $1500 alone, plus his waiting list is legendary!

[FascinatedWanderer]

Is a Chris Wilkes headjoint really worth almost as much as an entire Chris Wilkes keyless flute?

[eilam]

when i got my headjoint from Noy it was at least $1000, and a keyless would have been around $1200-1400.........i think the same goes with other makers?

[LorenzoFlute]

The headjoint and its blowhole are the most important part of a flute. Add to this the silver tube inside and the silver lip plate...

[Gabriel]

The headjoint and its blowhole are the most important part of a flute. Add to this the silver tube inside and the silver lip plate...

A great headjoint is worth nothing at all with a bad bore and vice versa...and I even dare to say that a simple hole drilled into a wooden tube with a great bore is way better than a high-end headjoint with a poor bore profile attached to it...

That said, I guess the flute that's on offer here is one of the best packages one can get - great bore that everyone's copying today with a great headjoint from a great modern maker.

Good luck with the sale Dave. I've dealt with him before and it has been a pleasure throughout. Totally recommended!

[LorenzoFlute]

A great headjoint is worth nothing at all with a bad bore and vice versa...and I even dare to say that a simple hole drilled into a wooden tube with a great bore is way better than a high-end headjoint with a poor bore profile attached to it...

Agreed of course. Though I think (I'm not a maker and I could be wrong) that once you know the right dimentions anyone can make a decent bore (?), while an embouchure hole is something more mysterious (am I wrong here Steffen?)

[Gabriel]

If you can play the flute and can work with a dremel and some files, you can make an embouchure hole. It's no magic. Not at all. You just shape and undercut a simple hole until you get it right. Of course there's some parameters that influence specific things (low E response "lives" in the embouchure hole to a great extent) and if you overdo it, you mess the headjoint up - but it's basically just like reed making for the uilleann pipes. Some scraping here, some scraping there...start with an oval shape of 12x10, undercut the blowing edge and the wings left and right of it while making sure that the chimney is neither concave nor convex, until the balance between lower and upper register sounds right to your ears, round off the "non-blowing edge" sides a bit on the inside (might not even be necessary) and you have a basic, but very workable headjoint. The rest is fine tuning and very personal stuff...and of course some might call it magic. But it isn't once you messed up a few headjoints and realize what you did wrong.

"Making" a bore is something completely different. Most makers take an antique flute as their starting point, but those bores have little imperfections, especially at a=440Hz, that you first accept (for the sake of historical correctness) but later try to remove - and then the whole journey starts. I was terrified when I found out that the low D warble I found in my very early bore designs in fact was caused by the upmost bore being too wide. But making the upper bore narrower left me with a weak low F#...took me a while to figure that problem out (and this one was living in the embouchure as well as the bore).

So basically you're right - if you know the dimensions things are easy, but getting to know them is a long and hard road...

[Akiba]

In the Boehm world, $1500 for a headjoint is the low minimum for a good one. I almost bought a wood Boehm headjoint for that price.

[dunnp]

Interesting comments Gabriel.
Lately I've been playing around with a Noy headjoint on my antique Blackman though it was not designed for this flute and requires loads of thread to make it fit.
The headjoint makes the flute sound like and feel like the Noy keyless flute, however it retains the personality quirks of the original.
The low D likes to be hit a certain way and pops out a certain way, the various c natural fingerings, the tone of middle d. It does seem to strengthen unvented E.
Nothing wrong with the original headjoint, the Noy is ,just well, different.

[Julia Delaney]

Speaking of head joints.... I have two that I'd like to sell. One by Wilkes (blackwood) and one by Olwell (cocus). Both are splendid examples of their maker's work. Either would make a good flute better.

Inquire, if you are interested, regarding price and dimension. Neither is cheap but neither is $1,200 either.

(Though I would sell them both for that amount.)