Flute sorcery at work
Our newer technician at work has been there about a year and a half. She's still more of an apprentice, but she has picked up a lot and can do most brass repairs, most flute repairs, and some sax repairs. She's still learning about clarinets but at least can repad them. She's a brass player so she can play-test those instruments. She can sort of play flute, and will do a preliminary play-test on those, but she'll bring them to me to do a final play-through since I can catch the minor issues she's not aware of.
She brings me this flute to play, and the sound is really weird. I feel strained when playing it. Once it gets up to high D, there's major resistance. At high F, it won't come out well, and high F# and above will not come out, no matter how hard I blow. Weird. She takes it back and tinkers with it again, but she cannot find anything wrong with it. I play it again; same thing. I can get high F out but F# and above, it's just air. It's like I'm attempting to overblow B natural and I don't have the angle or air speed correct, even though I know I do. With some notes that don't come out, there's obviously a leak somewhere and we can troubleshoot and figure that out. With this, nothing jumped out at us. And all the lower notes came out just fine. The player is in middle school and likely started hitting those higher-octave notes, so she wouldn't have noticed anything off until this point. I finally said, why don't we try swapping out the headjoint? With the one on the flute, I was feeling major resistance, like my air was getting pushed back at me. I wondered if there was a micro leak in it or something.
On Friday, my tech hands me the flute and has brought a different headjoint to try. There is nothing mechanically wrong with the body of the flute, but again, the upper octave is a problem. I take out the original headjoint and put in the new one--and it's fine. I can play the upper-most notes on the flute with no issue. The look on her face was perplexed. I put the old headjoint back in and sure enough, the notes did not come out. New headjoint? All was well. I even said to her, you look like you're thinking, "What sorcery is this?!" She said yeah. She had no idea the headjoint could make such a difference. Most are cut correctly; perhaps this one was a factory error. Or perhaps it does have some sort of micro leak in the soldering or something. I do play-test most of the beginner rental flutes, but she's started doing some of them and I wonder if that's what happened here, because I would not have let that flute go out in that condition.
At least it was a simple fix after all that. The flute player should have a much easier time getting out her high notes. One of the band directors at that school is a flute player I know, so I imagine the teacher may also have tried playing the flute and run into the issue. Sometimes it's the player; sometimes it's the instrument. It 100% was the instrument this time around.
Addendum: A few days later, the new headjoint she'd ordered had arrived, but it was just the metal cylinder; there wasn't a cork in it. Since the old headjoint wasn't working properly, she took the cork out of it--and we discovered the issue. There was about a centimeter gap between the end of the cork and the washer on the bottom. Aha. We closed the gap and the original headjoint worked fine. Better, the parent of the flute player came in to pick up the repaired flute later that same day so I was able to give her the update. Now we'll know should we run into this situation again. Check the cork!
She brings me this flute to play, and the sound is really weird. I feel strained when playing it. Once it gets up to high D, there's major resistance. At high F, it won't come out well, and high F# and above will not come out, no matter how hard I blow. Weird. She takes it back and tinkers with it again, but she cannot find anything wrong with it. I play it again; same thing. I can get high F out but F# and above, it's just air. It's like I'm attempting to overblow B natural and I don't have the angle or air speed correct, even though I know I do. With some notes that don't come out, there's obviously a leak somewhere and we can troubleshoot and figure that out. With this, nothing jumped out at us. And all the lower notes came out just fine. The player is in middle school and likely started hitting those higher-octave notes, so she wouldn't have noticed anything off until this point. I finally said, why don't we try swapping out the headjoint? With the one on the flute, I was feeling major resistance, like my air was getting pushed back at me. I wondered if there was a micro leak in it or something.
On Friday, my tech hands me the flute and has brought a different headjoint to try. There is nothing mechanically wrong with the body of the flute, but again, the upper octave is a problem. I take out the original headjoint and put in the new one--and it's fine. I can play the upper-most notes on the flute with no issue. The look on her face was perplexed. I put the old headjoint back in and sure enough, the notes did not come out. New headjoint? All was well. I even said to her, you look like you're thinking, "What sorcery is this?!" She said yeah. She had no idea the headjoint could make such a difference. Most are cut correctly; perhaps this one was a factory error. Or perhaps it does have some sort of micro leak in the soldering or something. I do play-test most of the beginner rental flutes, but she's started doing some of them and I wonder if that's what happened here, because I would not have let that flute go out in that condition.
At least it was a simple fix after all that. The flute player should have a much easier time getting out her high notes. One of the band directors at that school is a flute player I know, so I imagine the teacher may also have tried playing the flute and run into the issue. Sometimes it's the player; sometimes it's the instrument. It 100% was the instrument this time around.
Addendum: A few days later, the new headjoint she'd ordered had arrived, but it was just the metal cylinder; there wasn't a cork in it. Since the old headjoint wasn't working properly, she took the cork out of it--and we discovered the issue. There was about a centimeter gap between the end of the cork and the washer on the bottom. Aha. We closed the gap and the original headjoint worked fine. Better, the parent of the flute player came in to pick up the repaired flute later that same day so I was able to give her the update. Now we'll know should we run into this situation again. Check the cork!