A had my flute ///AMGed!

[Lebenz]

Well not literally. But as close as can be. My flute is about 4 years old, and while I’m not good at making much more than honking noises out of the thing, it was becoming difficult to get much of anything out of it. I borrowed the lady L’s Yamaha and what a difference in tone and ease of use! So a while ago I mentioned the problems to one of the folk I work for. His wife teaches flute and he immediately suggested someone local. He said, the guy is very interesting person and does the best work I was likely to find. So about 3 weeks ago I called the guy and found he lives and works only about 5 blocks from here. He’s from Russia and has been making and fixing flutes for 35 years, and also is a professor and former teacher. He has a workshop in the basement of his house, and in the shop there are milling machines, a lathe, a workbench with lots of highly specialized tools, an extraordinary cimbalom, and dozens and dozens of flutes, wooden and various types of metal. He repairs and creates truly fine instruments and yet was not at all critical of my humble Gemeinhardt student flute. I showed him the various problems with it, he gave me what I thought a very reasonable quote. I also asked if I could see him assemble the flute as I wanted to know how they go together. A couple of weeks later he called to tell me the flute was ready. I’ll spare most of the details but the flute literally works better than when new and also has better tone than the Yamaha. The key points were re-milling the embouchure, fixing the springs and adjusting the travel on the keys. Plus he polished the flute inside and out un-bent some things and corrected some errors stemming from the original production. He also said he went considerably over the time he’d estimated but refused to charge me more, even though I said I’d be happy to pay. At some point when I don’t have a bunch of monthly bills to pay, I’d like to get one of the nicer flutes. The ones he makes are in the 10K-30K range and they are both works of art and have remarkable tone.

Anyway, the repair was a very reasonable value, and while no expert on flutes, I could not be happier. Based on this experience I have a far better appreciation of what it is that AMG does to the breathing abilities of the average MB engine.