Buying New and Used Flutes

Buying New and Used Flutes

I found the following article on eBay about new and used flutes, and extracted some of the more informative paragraphs, which I thought people considering purchasing a new flute might find useful:

http://www.ebay.com/gds/Flute-Guide-/10000000000818282/g.html

Not all flutes, not even all new flutes, are ever worth buying at any price.  $100 is a great price for a good used flute.  Lots of used flutes on eBay sell for $100 or under.  Very, very few of these are worth buying.  Let’s start at the bottom of the new & used flute pile and move upwards.

The worst new & used flutes for sale on eBay are the Chinese imports.  I’m not just talking about the obvious ones, with the poorly translated titles like “fair sounding lucky flute instrument” auctions from China.  The same new flutes are sold by American (and Australian) businesses who import these flutes by the thousand.  Most of the “bankruptcy sales” and “80% off retail” listings are these flutes.  All of the coloured flutes fall into this category.  These coloured flutes, be they pink or blue or black or whatever, are all extremely low quality.  Most of the listings which describe the flutes by year such as “2006 model” or “2007 model” are these new & used flutes.  (Real new & used flutes are not like cars.  They are not sold by model year.) For some reason they often come with “joint protectors”, or little plastic caps that fit on the end of the tenons.  Sometimes they are sold with grease for the joints.  (This is unusual for the good brands). They will claim a normal retail value in the $600 range.  This is an exaggeration; they import these new flutes from China for as little as $25 per flute. The descriptions are suave with much html and they look quite professional.  They will claim to be high quality and will say they are not the cheap imitations you have heard about, even though they are.  They will say they are enormously popular in school band programs.  (Band directors and flute teachers laugh at these flutes.) My favorite thing they say is that these flutes are “Teacher Approved.”  There is no teacher I know of who would recommend these flutes for their students.  Even though they are made in China, they are not always shipped from China, but rather are sold from America (or Australia).  The sellers are often American Power Sellers with tons of very positive feedback.  People post feedback immediately upon receiving the new flute in the mail.  They open up the package, look at the shiny flute which they have no clue how to play and immediately send rave reviews to the seller’s feedback account.  A month later, when the flute literally falls apart, the buyers are unable to leave negative feedback because they already left positive feedback.  When they do break, the warranties will be recently expired.  And of course, these sellers never give anyone their phone numbers or email addresses, and never answer questions.

There are many reasons why these new & used flutes are a waste of money.  They are manufactured in China by unskilled assembly line workers who get paid less than a dollar per hour.  The metal these new & used flutes are made of is not nickel-silver, or even brass.  It’s usually pot metal, an alloy of copper and lead.  Folks, there could be serious concerns here about lead poisoning.  The metal is brittle and has a low 900 degree melting point.  The low melting point makes this metal easy to work with in the construction of the flute, but impossible to repair.  (The flutes are cast instead of forged.)  These truly are “disposable flutes.”  Dents cannot be removed from pot metal, ribs and posts cannot be reattached with solder, and the tenons cannot be adjusted.  The silver plating is microscopically thin and will wear off quickly.  Even worse, the silver plating is often applied with chemicals containing cyanide. (I wonder if they take the time to wash these chemicals off?)  The metal underneath is grey and ugly.  Spare parts are not available for these new & used flutes, since it is always unknown which factory they came from.  Either way, these factories do not sell spare parts anyway.  There is no music store that I know of that would even attempt to repair a Chinese flute.  And I have seen some rather shocking construction defects on these flutes over the years.

What should I buy?  Good new & used flutes are made by good brands.  Enough said. End of story.  No exceptions.  The sellers of the Chinese instruments I described above will claim that their brand is famous, well known, and high quality.  Sometimes they exaggerate; most often they out and out lie.  Most of those brands are not brands at all.  The Chinese factories that sell these flutes sell them completely unmarked with no brand or serial number.  The American (or Australian) importers engrave their own American sounding names onto the new flutes, along with a meaningless serial number.  When enough bad reputation spreads around the internet they just change the brand name.

In contrast the manufacturer of our new flutes, Gemeinhardt is the largest exclusive manufacturer of flutes and piccolos in the world.  Their 2SP model is the top selling flute and the second-best selling band instrument in the U.S.A. This is according to Gemeinhardt’s own press releases, which can be read on Gemeinhardt’s website at http://www.gemeinhardt.com/ We also only stock quality used flutes, made by leading manufacturers, and they are all fully re-conditioned by Exclusively Flutes, and subject to strict quality control, and sold with warranty for your peace of mind.