This is a long winded shopping experience.
I e-mailed a local flute specialty shop that I was interested in trying out their different head joints and made an appointment to stop by today.
I walked in to the shop pulled out my Gemeinhardt 3SB flute and the man looked at it and went to open up the wall display and pulled out one of the Muramatsu flutes. lol.
I was pointed out the superior construction of the Muramatsu flute. How there were no spaces betwwen key levers and tubing how each, every key had equal pressure/resistance, and how cork and padding was flush where it needed to be. It was a beautiful looking flute.
I was also pointed out how inferior my Gemeinhardt was in comparison. Where I had spaced in tubing, how my 2nd Bb trill key and F key met in a non-perfect manner, and how the cork under that Bb/F trill was not complete (small piece broke off), and how small and roung my embouchure hole was in comparison to the muramatsu.
I then emphasized that I was really picking up the flute again and was looking for just a head joint to improve the tone and response of my current flute.
Out came the head joint boxes (I want one of those multi-head boxes). I was immediately shown two Muramatsu head joints and they fit into my Gemeinharft well enough and so I tested them out. I found the non-wing head joint I tried had a wonderful tone and the wind-type wasn`t as bright, but was effortlessly stonger in the lower octave.
One thing that shocked me when testing these head joints however was that while I wanted to get better tone and response I wanted to get rid what little breathiness that was audible to me from my Gemeinhardt standard J head joint. I assumed that I would hear nothing, but a pefect breathless tone on these Muramatsu head joints, but nope... even the wing lip that I expected to be naturally least breathy was worse in the higher octave.
I asked what other head joints were available and I was presented with a Powell. I expected much much better. I put the Powell on my flute and I was shocked at how horrible the tone was and how it lacked power and projection that even my Gemeinhardt had. I pointed out to the guy that I was shocked and asked what was wrong with the head joint. He pointed out the smaller hole and noted that it was a much older Powell. I asked for a more modern Powell, but the guy didn`t have any. I believe that the head joint was a decoy ward people away from Powells and to Muramatsus... so be warned.
After that I asked what the prices were for the Muramatsu head joints. Before I came to the place I was told that there were head joints ranging from $600-1000 and I know I could get a wingcut Muramatsu for much less than what I was told the price of both head joints were.
So I asked... what head joint do you have that is around $600? I was shown a Natsuki P2 which had a weird "Golf ball" design in the riser on the side you blow against. I asked about the other head joints and I was told that they were not of the same quality as these that I was being shown. So I went ahead and tried the odd Golf Ball head joint and then tried the regular Muramatsu against it. I had trouble trying to determine which one was actually better and I introduced my Gemeinhardt to the testing.
Now once I started testing the Gemeinhardt, Natsuki, and Muramatsu... switching between them to try and distinguish which had a better sound and the guy took notice and pointed out that the advantage of the larger hole of these head joints was projection and so I tried projecting in all ranges. I`m afraid my Gemeinhardt head joint was blown out of the water. I was shocked at how much more I was able to project on the Muramatsu and Natsuki.
Well considering the Natsuki was $600 and the plain-jane Muramatsu was $950 and it had the least breathy higher range. I figured $600 is a deal I`ll take this Natsuki for now and shop some more.
So now I have a new head joint which I am quite happy with!
Oh I also got to play the Muramatsu flute too and I`m still quite happy with my Gemmy. I was afraid I would get that digital to Grand piano effect on the professional flute and have a silly longing for a new flute, but nope... the difference wasn`t that extreme at all (thank goodness!).
