hey grats mate sounds like your realy wraped in the new head joint.

looking at getting a nagahara headjoint for my yamaha 511
tho i think ill have to buy it from the states as here in australia the only place i've found that carrys them want
$2300 AUD for a basic all silver thats $2100 USD and from what i've seen there a fair bit cheaper than $2100 USD in the states.

ill go and try them out here and then order the one i want
and just hope for the best as i realy dont want to have to make a trip to the states just for a new head joint

i'm sure i wont regret it as thay would have to be my favourite head joint till then ill just keep looking on ebay maybe i will get lucky lol

Jose Luis ... what headjoint were you using on your Yamaha prior to the Nagahara? You sound so pleased with the Nagahara ... I'd be curious to hear more about what differences pro and con that you are finding between the two. Thanks.

Very, very rare to find Nagahra HJs in Ebay or anywhere else except the factory near Boston, USA, at All Flutes plus in London and a couple of other European shops (one is in Holland).

It depends on the model, but Silver .950, with 14K gold riser are around 1,950 USD at factory and about 1,450 B.P in London. In both cases the TVA is included, but it is 6.5% in Boston and 15% in London. If you buy from Australia, you save the TVA in both cases, but I believe you will not be allowed to try three different HJs and then buy one. Yes, if you were in USA, but no longer now, being abroad. At least, this was my personal experience.

All Flutes Plus offers the possibility of buying and returning it if you do not like it, and you get reimbursed with the costs of the shipments only at your charge. But in this case you would be buying only one, except you have a lot of money to buy a few and then get reimbursed for those not chosen. Customs clearance could also be an issue and add to the cost.

After a year of hesitation about four options: going to Nagahara in Boston, going to London, having it shipped from London with return possibility and having it shipped from Boston without return possibility), a delay which finally costed me 300 US$ in price increase, I decided to travel personally to London and not to Boston, because the cost of the trip was smaller and I could try also other brands, just in case.

I believe I made the right choice, but I live at just a two hours, 100 USD flight away from London.

It could also be that Nagahara presents its products in Australia at some flute fair, find out with them.

If you travel to London, be sure that they have them on stock, as they are distributors of this and other brands. You would prefer to have one reserved for you, as the arrangements for the flight, arriving there, etc. will take you a few days and it should not be sold in the meantime.

My experience with three HJs in London is that all of them fit loosely on the my Yamaha YFL 674 and could be tried on my 674 without problem (so it should be the same case on your 511, unless yours is heavy wall type and a normal wall HJ would be too much loose). At the shop, they fit the one you choose to your flute at the moment, so you can be sure there is no problem, but it requires going there personally.

Good luck and post what happened!

Hi Goldenflute,

I used the Yamaha Silver .925 EC cut that came originally with that flute.

I had bought the flute without trial and I could adapt to the HJ after a rather long process, but some problems remained and were frustrating. I have less than a week with the new HJ and I still have to solve some problems, but others simply disappeared. For one, I have to change my old embouchure and the tuning is different. But in two days I could play in tune with my teacher, the problem is that this HJ is quite sensitive to the direction of the air stream and one must be very careful.

But dynamics is greatly increased, as well as the third octave, though I do not get much powerful low notes, however, but I am sure it's just me.

I have to leave now, we can continue discussing this later or when I gather more experience.

I'm just playing on the stock CY head joint for my yamaha.