Review: Casey Burns Beginner's Flute

[srt19170]

I'm not a flautist, so excuse me if this is a dumb question, but why does a beginner flute cost so much? It wouldn't seem to require much more handwork than a whistle. Is it simply much more expensive to acquire the wood? If so, is there some good reason (beyond musician superstition about the tonal qualities of various woods) why beginner flutes aren't made out of a more accessible wood (say, maple)?

-- Scott

[IDAwHOa]

I am not an advanced player of flute OR whistle, but have picked up a couple of things about them over the last couple of months. Here are some factors that I believe go into the pricing of each instrument:

Material: Some material is more expensive than others, wood of any type typically being more expensive than any polymer. Some woods are quite exotic and expensive to obtain.

MFG Process: Some instruments are conical and some are cylindrical. The latter require quite a bit more skill and workmanship to produce with a quality result. The time one puts into voicing and tuning an instrument is considered as well. Hand made vs. automated processs play a big factor here as well.

Manufacturer: This can add quite a bit to the price of an instrument. Actual or perceived value added by the person behind the design and manufacture of an instrument can really bump a price up.

So, whether a "beginners" or "advanced" instrument is obtained, if an exotic material is used to produce a complicated instrument by a well regarded maker you can guess the outcome. Sacrificing one or more of the mentioned factors can mediate the price. It is up to you to decide what level you wish to accept as your purchase.

I personally agree that if you have ANY inkling that you will stick with a particular instrument that it is important to get the best you can afford. Trying to learn on a poorly manufactured instrument that does not play well can be quite frustrating. Of course you need to balance that against the fact that some of the instruments made for advanced players, although sweet in their hands, may be difficult for a beginner to play as well. It is extremely important to read threads such as this one to get a feel for what will work for your situation.

Best

[Loren]

1) The cost of wood for a D flute will be significantly more than the cost for a D whistle in the same wood.

2) Generally speaking, the cost of tooling is higher for making (conical) flutes as opposed to cylindrical whistles:

A significantly larger (longer) lathe would be needed to make a 2 section flute than would be required to make a 2 section whistle - the bed of your lathe needs to be at least twice as long as the longest section of the instrument you're making.

One could find store bought cylindrical reamers for making whistles, however the maker of a conical bore flute will typically have to custom make (or have made for him/her) tapered reamers, which can be expensive.

3)Turning, boring, reaming, and finishing a very small piece of wood (soprano whistle) will take less time than doing the same for a flute.

4) Flute tennons need to be cut and then fitted with cork or thread, something typically not done on wooden whistles.

I'm certain I'm forgetting a thing or two, but there's a start.

Loren

[jim stone]

People are PMing me asking for Casey's website:
it's www.caseyburnsflutes.com
Also you can look him up; search 'casey burns.' Best

[jim stone]

I'm not a flautist, so excuse me if this is a dumb question, but why does a beginner flute cost so much? It wouldn't seem to require much more handwork than a whistle. Is it simply much more expensive to acquire the wood? If so, is there some good reason (beyond musician superstition about the tonal qualities of various woods) why beginner flutes aren't made out of a more accessible wood (say, maple)?

-- Scott

Sweetheart has a good beginner's flute in maple for 250.
I like the maple sweetheart better than any other
wood Ralph S uses (walnut, cherry, applewood),
except perhaps for rosewood,
which costs considerably more. My impression is that mopane is better
for flutes than these more accessible woods.

[Cathy Wilde]

[quote="skh"]Jim,

on the pictures on Casey Burns' website it looks like the beginners flute has strange cutoffs on the far side of the embouchure holes, like some sort of ridges in the wood. Does your flute have these, and what are they for?

**********

Hey, Sonja -- I played one of those with the cutoffs at John's last week (Jim, those were what I was asking you about on the flute board). Maybe I didn't get to play long enough, but I didn't notice a huge difference. We conjectured that the cutoffs maybe were kinder for people who still hadn't settled on where to aim their airstreams?

(if I had an Airstream, I'd be aiming it to Florida about now, but that's another story)

Anyway, they certainly didn't hurt anything, although I don't know if they helped anything either. And I still think the flute's a great value for the dollar, esp. against PVC.

~ cat, who still can't work the quote feature.

[IDAwHOa]

Jim,

on the pictures on Casey Burns' website it looks like the beginners flute has strange cutoffs on the far side of the embouchure holes, like some sort of ridges in the wood. Does your flute have these, and what are they for?

Also, I must admit that I'm going for looks more than I expected to do - it just looks weird to me. Doesn't mean anything, of course.

thanks,

Sonja

Thanks for pointing this out. I checked the picture on the
website. The 'cutoffs' are put there to improve the
sound, but the flute Casey sent me doesn't have them.I've seen plenty of his flutes with em and they look
fine to me. If you don't want em, you can say so.
I really don't know for sure what impact they have
on tone.

This is what Casey wrote to me about the little cuts on the flute embouchure:

"Not all of the flutes have these - this is what I call my "session" embouchure - these are grooves cut into the wood to facilitate the air reed of the flute and increase the "reediness" of the tone. Only problem is that you then can't turn off the "reediness" and get a rounder tone so I only cut them per request. That flute was my prototype for this design and had this feature."