I was looking around the internet and stumbled upon this

http://www.drelinger.com/product.htm

I've never seen or heard any of the products on here until now.

I don't get the point of the upright headjoint. The horizontal design of the flute is one of the things that make it unique from other intruments, why change it?

anyway, what are your opinions on this? It looks like a bunch of BS to me.

Well, Penny, many of those things are proven to be good with time, and perhaps incorporated to common flute design.
But many innovations are just discarded because of being too expensive or made of dificult to get materials, or just didn't work at all.
But if we think carefully, many of the advances in flute making appeared accidentally, when inventors put their minds to work in something new, and by trial and error ended up finding something useful or special.
I don't think those Drelinger ideas are aplicable to me at the moment, but I don't simply discard them, because they might be something unanimous someday.

Zevang

The point of the Uprite is to relieve some stress in the shoulders/arms for those people with injuries to that part of the body. It serves a purpose, but the transversely held flute (what most people are accustomed to) works perfectly well for most people, and is unlikely to be supplanted by the Uprite any time soon. Drelinger makes some extremely fine headjoints (they are not for everybody, but then no head is), whether traditional or Uprite, and it most certainly is not BS.

It's not as uncommon as you might think:
http://www.flutelab.com/
(You also have to have a sax type thumbrest fitted apparently.)
Check out the one-handed flute:
http://www.flutelab.com/Editfluit2.jpg

I do think it takes some of the fun out of it, although I imagine that if you had some sort of injury, it would be fantastic to still be able to play.

Hello, I found your forum today and came across a discussion from some time ago about the Uprite headjoint by Drelinger. I would like to know if anybody tried it. I myself have been playing for a year with the "Swanneck" headjoint, made by Martin Visser in Amsterdam. It´s working fine, even though I like the tone in my old, normal headjoint better. I had to chose between getting an ergonomic flute or stop working. It was no problem to chose...

I would be very happy if somebody could tell me some experience on the Uprite. Or any other ergonomic solution for that matter.

Greetings from ninni.