Sale alert Orpheo flutes on clearance on Ebay

Phineas · Post by **Phineas** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:32 pm

Ok, I finally for the flute here is what I think so far...the bad first.

1. The seating of the pads were not great. Whome ever seated these pads did not give them enough to cure. Most of the pads were O.K., but I will have to see what I am going to do about the bad ones. I could probably live with most of them, but I will definitely have to replace the "C" pad on the footjoint.

2. Maybe because of the shipping, but I had to make adjustments on it right out of the box.

3. 1 spring was popped off, but that is pretty minor.

4. The lipplate is a waste of time. The headjoint cut is similar to a wood piccolo headjoint. I definitely like the after market wood headjoints better! The lipplate totally threw me off mentally!

5. The G# key <bleck!> enough said!

The good.

1. Once I got use to the headjoint...WOW...I love the sound! It is not a wood sound, more like a big plastic piccolo sound to me. Still "woody" enough though.

2. The key action is light and pretty responsive. I have no problem doing faster packages.

3. I like the D# roller.

Over all, I would have probably been ok with the flute at the original price considering what a wood flute costs. The quality of this flute is on par with the last Chinese made wood flute I had (That I paid $1500 for). However, I like the Silver Orpheus(615-715) flutes better than I like this one. The headjoint can do some wonderful things, but it is definitely not for a beginner! I had to practice on my Bamboo flute first to get anything dynamic out of it. But once I did, oh man the sound. Unfortunately, I will have to dump some cash into it to get some pad work done it. I would send it back, but supposedly, a repair person looked at this thing before it left the shop. Any repair person that did not at least see the "C" pad not seated properly, is not someone I would want working on my instrument. For what I paid, I can dump another $100 into it, or do it myself. Thank goodness the tone holes are pretty level!

MissyH
Thank you for the heads up. I had some of the same exact symptoms you had, and was able to nail them down. Now lets see how this baby will hold up!

Phineas

MissyHPhoenix · Post by **MissyHPhoenix** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 9:19 pm

I'm glad that you find your experience with it so far to be positive rather than negative. Please let me know how you continue to do with it, how it holds up, and how much work you have to put into it to get it going. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to send mine off to have it worked on.

Alkatji · Post by **Alkatji** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 3:21 am

Hi,

I did make an offer on the alto and got it for a very nice price.

I will have it checked, tested and played by a pro when it arrives.
if you are interested i will post his comments and feedbacks. (in 10 days or something).

Phineas you said you prefer the silver 615-715 flutes, maybe they have focused on this models, they have more knowledge about normal flutes (can I say soprano flute?)... so they craft it better. after all this is the most common flute model.
Composite, alto, bass, picolo are special and would take more time and energy to get the right crafting skills.

Phineas · Post by **Phineas** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 6:46 am

Alkatji wrote:Hi,

I did make an offer on the alto and got it for a very nice price.

I will have it checked, tested and played by a pro when it arrives.
if you are interested i will post his comments and feedbacks. (in 10 days or something).

Phineas you said you prefer the silver 615-715 flutes, maybe they have focused on this models, they have more knowledge about normal flutes (can I say soprano flute?)... so they craft it better. after all this is the most common flute model.
Composite, alto, bass, picolo are special and would take more time and energy to get the right crafting skills.

Actually, I think the composite flute was a beta experiment that was never quite refined/finished. However, since metal/silver flutes are more common, it was easier for them to copy designs from other flutes. I would say the same thing for the Alto flutes and piccolos also. I remember when i first picked up an Orpheus flute. The first thing I thought was "PEARL COPY" without the pinless mechanism. Unfortunately, Pearl does not make a composite flute. Thank goodness the parts are mostly the same as the silver flutes! I think once I get this composite flute refined a little with a couple of design changes, it will be a great flute.

I would like to hear how your Alto flute turns out.

Also, later this evening, I am going to post some recordings of this beast! Stay tuned!

Phineas

Phineas · Post by **Phineas** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 6:02 pm

Update

I talked to Noteworthy Music today. They had no problem either making good on my repair costs, or giving me a refund even though I bought it for the discount price. That is real service, even though the guy I talked to was aware of the factory setup issues.

I took the flute over to Starcity Music here in Roanoke, and the repair person was willing to check the flute out. The same issues I found with the flute, she confirmed. She also noticed a few other pads that were not seating properly. She fixed everything for under $100! She said the pads were good quality pads, they were just not setup properly. She also made the modification to the footjoint. Basicly, she did what the factory should have done, and did a good setup at that. Now it is the instrument I expected. Now it plays really well!

We will see how it goes from here.

Phineas

MissyHPhoenix · Post by **MissyHPhoenix** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 9:31 pm

Phineas, exactly what did she have to do to it? Maybe it would be worth my putting out the dollars to have it done so I can play mine again ....

Phineas · Post by **Phineas** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 7:32 am

MissyHPhoenix wrote:Phineas, exactly what did she have to do to it? Maybe it would be worth my putting out the dollars to have it done so I can play mine again ....

Reseated/shimmed the pads.(About 7 of them)
Leveled out the rollers on the footjoint.
Put a cork on the G# key.
Lubrication and adjustment.

Basically, everything the factory should have done to it before it left the factory. It looks like bad factory setups having given this instrument a bad rap. I took mine in at lunch time, and it was done by 5! Only took Brenda a couple of hours to do it. The little work she did made a BIG improvement!

Get it fixed! you will love it! If your local repair tech is trying to rake you through the coals, send it to Brenda, she will hook you up! PM me if ytou need more details.

Phineas

MissyHPhoenix · Post by **MissyHPhoenix** » Fri Apr 10, 2009 10:35 pm

Phineas, I talked to Brenda today; as a result, my Orpheus goes out in the mail to her tomorrow! I would've gotten it off today but ran out of time ....

Thanks so much for the info! She thinks, after listening to my description of the problems, that it is pretty much like what you had wrong with yours. It sure will be nice to be able to play it again. NOT that I can play it like you do -- I'm gonna stick to the baroque and leave the impressive jazz-fluting to you! I might have a couple glasses of wine one night and give it a try, tho .... as long as nobody is awake to listen to me, that is!

Again, thanks. Any time you want to do more sound bytes of your playing, you will not get any negative feedback from me. I enjoyed it immensely!

Phineas · Post by **Phineas** » Sat Apr 11, 2009 8:10 am

MissyHPhoenix wrote:Phineas, I talked to Brenda today; as a result, my Orpheus goes out in the mail to her tomorrow! I would've gotten it off today but ran out of time ....

Thanks so much for the info! She thinks, after listening to my description of the problems, that it is pretty much like what you had wrong with yours. It sure will be nice to be able to play it again. NOT that I can play it like you do -- I'm gonna stick to the baroque and leave the impressive jazz-fluting to you! I might have a couple glasses of wine one night and give it a try, tho .... as long as nobody is awake to listen to me, that is!

Again, thanks. Any time you want to do more sound bytes of your playing, you will not get any negative feedback from me. I enjoyed it immensely!

First off, I am glad that you are getting you flute worked on. As you heard from the sound clip I sent you, it really has cool sound and a pretty good response. Not as good as my Miyazawa, but fine for doing some types of music. It would take some time for me to play classical on it for sure!

I do not know about my playing being that impressive...lol But I can hold my own. Thanks for the compliment! I will keep you in mind when I do some new recordings!

You are welcome!

Phineas