Hi guys, it's me again with more questions for my flute hunt. May I know what are the differences between the traditional flute scale and the modern scales? Will it be overly difficult to compensate for the out-of-tune notes? Oh, and feel free to share with us your experience of using old scale flutes Thanks!

Well, not all traditional scales are quite the same. The scale basically involves the size and placement of the toneholes. Perhaps the older ones should be called "pre-Cooper" scales or something, as individual manufacturers would sometimes move a tonehole upon receiving complaints from customers about particularly poor intonation on a single note, without regard to what else moving that tonehole might do. The different manufacturers thus ended up with different scales that they were using to attempt to correct intoantion. ALbert Cooper (and others independently) recalculated how big the toneholes should be and where they should be placed, and ended up with something pretty similar to Boehm's original schema. The older scales are slightly more difficult to play in tune than the modern Bennett scale, or something similar, but by no means impossible. A good, flexible player can easily bend a note quite a lot (up to a half step depending on who is playing, and what note they're trying to bend), so it should be no problem to make the tiny adjustments needed to play a traditional scale flute in tune (as years upon years of professional flutists using equipment like that have shown). I've played many, many flutes, and I can honestly say that some of the best were the older ones...The ones that had the traditional scales.

I agree, and this topic has caused arguments in the past and probably will again, it really comes down to the player being good enough to adjust to the various scales of the flute they play, I have said and will say again, that traditional scale flutes are easier, for me, to play when they are c-foot, vice versa for modern, sharper flutes

One must remember that there is really nothing wrong with the "old" scale. It is very accurate, just not at A440, because it is not scaled to 440. Play it where it's scaled to be and it is perfectly fine and "in-tune". Of course, if the dang string players in your orchestra are up to A444 after intermission you're going to have a problem!

Joe B