Boehm with tone of Irish flute?

[Chris Carr]

My Boehm flute is currently unplayable due to a need for maintenance, so I've been primarily using my traditional Irish flute. As I've been recording a bit lately, I find that I prefer the rich tone tone of the Irish flute, however, I'd prefer not to be stuck in the key of D/Bm for the rest of my life. I'd love to find a way to get a similar tone to the Irish flute in a Boehm without breaking the 3k mark for a used instrument. I listened to a ton of samples of the Gua, and I didn't love the tone.

Suggestions?

[fluteguy18]

You have a few options. Either get a wood flute or a wood head, or get a fully keyed irish flute, or just work on your sound. The flutist of Cherish the Ladies often plays an all silver Miyazawa, but you'd never be able to tell just by listening...

[Gandalfe]

You can make progress by listening to the greats and working on getting as close as you can that sound. As a doubler, I'm often called upon to sound like a bassoon on a bari sax. It can be done, but it took a lot of voicing practice. It that case, it was for a theater pit job and I changed my reeds to a weaker strength and found that a synthetic reed came the closest to make the sound I wanted. In your case, I might explore finding different flute heads to see it that would help you with your quest. Be prepared to pay for the need for the head connection point to be sized to fit your flute.

I did want to say that for my main performance instruments, I have a back up that I own, my wife owns, or my son owns, just in case. If any of my support group want to sell their instrument ID'd as my backup, I get first dibs.

[Chris Carr]

I bit the bullet and ordered a fully restored vintage Rudall, Rose, and Carte from London Flutes. It's an 18th century model, so there's no metal liner, which means no cracks. Oddly, I prefer the old style headjoint on my Irish flute to a modern headjoint with a raised lip plate, so I'm pretty thrilled to have found a vintage Boehm with the old school headjoint. They may not be as efficient, but I feel like I have more control with it. It'll probably take three weeks to ship halfway around the world, at which time I'll have a week to return it if I hate it. It's pretty tough to buy specialty instruments on an island in the middle of the pacific! In the meantime, the shop on the other side of the island has just finished the repair on my silver flute, so things are looking up!