Musical Blues

So I walk into a music store that prides itself in buying your used musical instruments. I show them my mint condition Gemeinhardt 2SP flute. The owner (actually the son of the owner) comes over and looks at the flute. He then says that I have a beautiful "student" flute and he hasn't bought any "student" flutes in a year. I wasn't miffed and to be honest I wasn't surprised. This is my life in the world of low-cost musical instruments.

Right now I own too many guitars. I have a plectrum banjo I love and a cheap banjo I keep at a bandmate's house where we practice. I have a ukulele I love and another ukulele with a modified string set. I have one flute and ten tin whistles. I love six of the whistles because they are a set of Generation brass whistles that were tweaked by a professional tweaker. Those instruments I love are the ones that I have no intention of ever selling. I don't have the dreaded acquisition syndrome that wants me to keep buying and buying. I have extra whistles because these are the inexpensive kind (whistles can go for up to over $1k) and I am experimenting with my own tweaking.

So I have the right banjo, ukulele and tin whistles. The same can't be said about the guitars or the flute. Now these cannot be compared. The student flute is designed so that parents can buy a flute for their kids without breaking the bank before they know whether or not the kids will stick to it. A good flute costs over $1,250 and the low end of that price range is still compromising the quality but with the ability to improve the existing flute for only over another $1,000. On the other hand the market is flooded with cheap guitars to fill the demand of kids who want to be rock stars some day. Finding a low end guitar that a musician can love is purely a matter of luck. And that only applies to electric guitars. Now, I'm content with my electric guitars because I've finally decided that rock music is not my musical destination in life. The Epiphone Les Paul I own is modified for the alternate tuning I play and the neck is stable. The two other guitars have unstable necks.

My acoustic guitars, on the other hand, are okay at best, but not performance-level. Acoustic guitars on the low end aren't loveable as a matter of luck. They just aren't capable of sounding like the better guitars. I hear good thinks about Godin's Seagull guitars but I have never heard their tones come from the audio tracks of noted acoustic players. My Korean-built Songbird guitar sound nice, but I can't play it with the other acoustic players I know (one has a Martin HD-28.)

The music store incident is indicative of the low-cost instrument dilemma. A good musical instrument, especially acoustic, will retain their value after the initial sell. The others won't. A good acoustic instrument will sound better with time. The others won't. Good acoustic instruments can be passed down from generation to generation. The others can't. I may never get a better guitar now that I'm getting away from them. I'll use what I have to make recordings that other instruments will be focused over and will continue to pursue the whistle and flute.

The reason I wanted to sell the flute was to get away from the Boehm-style metal concert flute to play an Irish flute. The fingering of the Irish flute is similar to the tin whistle and I can already play my whistles better than my flute. I wanted the money to get the entry-level flute and if I liked playing it, get a pro-level one for Christmas. A good keyless Irish flute costs less than the concert flutes and acoustic guitars of the same quality. Note I said keyless. Eight-key Irish flutes cost between $3,000 and $5,000. I don't see a need for a keyed flute as long as the songs are in D or G (I can expand using cross-fingering to produce some extra accidentals, thereby playing in more keys.)

I have improved on my attitude over this issue and writing this has helped more. I am making a flute out of PVC to try my hand at making a musical instrument as well as having a flute to try.