miyazawa MZ-7 platinum riser - room for growth?

[kshillum]

Hello,
I recently purchased the miyazawa headjoint, and have been playing on it for about a month now (just a couple of hours at a time, 3x a week). The flute I have been playing on for the past 17 years is a Yamaha 581. When trying out the miyazawa, I tried a number of pieces in different ranges/tempos/styles and was really happy with it at the time (I tried it for a couple of hours in the 'flute room' at the store, on 2 different occasions. The low range is rich and clear, but the higher range sounds kind of harsh and sharp, still. It's just not consistent for me yet, and I'm finding I get a warmer tone on my yamaha headjoint - it still feels like 'home'. I'm worried I made a huge mistake. My question - how much 'work' does a new headjoint take, until I should start to notice more consistency in my playing and ease in achieving different colours of sound. Any suggestions for exercises I can try to help reach my potential on this headjoint?
Thanks for any expertise you can share.

[Zevang]

It really gets time. Be pacient and the results will come, for sure.

From my own experience I can tell you that when I switched from my old Muramatsu Standard model (made in the 70's) to my current Sankyo K14 it was said to me by this brand's expert it would take me one year to get accustumed to it. In reality this was over in about six months. Soon after that I got into my current headjoint, a Nagahara, and it took me another 6 months to get things running. Now I can play both Sankyo and Nagahara. It takes me just one day of practice to adjust. I keep them both because they are different and I often want to change depending on the repertoire I play.

good luck

[kshillum]

Thanks for the encouragement. I'll keep working at it. I'm thinking more work on long tones, scales and studies using the new one on a consistent basis. I'm relieved to hear that it can take a while.

[fluteguy18]

Keep at it. Changing hardware takes time to get the best results. When I got my Miyazawa it took the better part of a year to figure out that I had the wrong headjoint. It had the best tone color for me but the articulation just wasn't working. So I switched from an MZ8 to an MZ7 and that fixed it. It took the better part of a year of tone work though to achieve the same amount of color that I had on the old one. But, with that being said everything else was better on the MZ7 headjoint so it was indeed the best option for me.

Keep working on it.

[lianeandflute]

i think, just in the way they are built, miyazawa headjoints are harder to play than yamaha anyway but do get better in the long run results so keep working i think it's worth it.