What flute is better a Gemeinhardt or a Yamaha. Cuz I want a flute that will last a long time and sound really good.

Oh..no! Not again!!! It may have been wise if you would have read some of the other posts on this before posting your question.

Yamaha

I don`t know anything about Yamahas, but I have Gemeinhardt and it rocks the house. They last a long time too! My old band teacher had hers for 32 years! And it was in better condition than my first flute which was owned for 3 years by me and like 3 years by someone before me. I`d go with the Gemeinhardt. That`s my personal take anyway.

I hired a gemeinhardt for 3 years and recently got a yamaha and it is much better! it sounds nicer and it is far easier to play and the gemeinhardt was not very wearing!

Summarising what I said in other threads...

If you want a `fuzzy`, `dead` sound, you can be 97% certain of getting it with a Gemeinhardt.

Student flutes: If you want a flute that does not let you down when you want a strong, clear, responsive sound, you have it in Yamaha.

If you want to spend a lot of money, you have other options, which don`t include Gemeinhardt.

Yamahas are well made, robust and reliable. Gemeinhardts are more scruffily made, rubust, but reliable only after expert attention.

It entirely depends on WHICH Gemeinhardt and WHICH Yamaha flute you are considering. What are you looking at?

Fuzzy-ness in the flute is generally caused by the flute player.

When you pick a foreign flute you very often play fuzzily since you are not accustomed to the placement of the embouchure hole of the head joint.

Some head joints are cut so that the air is focused into the head joint so fuzzy-ness is less likely to occur. People who play flutes with a cut the focuses the air into the intsrument may have trouble adjusting to other flutes with traditional-cut headjoints.

Fuzzy-ness does not make a flute bad. You should practice with a new flute a while and let your lips get used to it nuances and them compare how it plays to your old flute.

Quite often going from a beginner to a more advanced flute with more resistance built into a head joint may be challenging, but the resistance usually allows for more projection and more secure scale.

I was writing from the perspective of a versatile, experienced and accomplished flute player who, also being a repair technican play-testing hundreds of flutes per year, is VERY used to quickly making the adjustments necessary to get close to the best tone that any particular flute has to offer, particularly for student flutes, where the tone is more likely to be limited by the instrument rather than the player.

I am not alone in KNOWING that most student Gemeinhardts have a limit, where if the player attempts to get any more than a mediocre volume, all the flute is capable of doing is making not louder `sweet` tones, but louder fuzziness.

Compared with student Yamahas, the AVAILABLE tone and volume in most student Gemeinhardts, over the last couple of decades, to a capable, VERSATILE player, is gutless!

I was NOT writing from the perspective of a non-versatile player, unable to compare student flutes!

BTW I have played well-designed (usually non-student) flutes with `traditional cut` head joints which DO have clear, full tone. Indeed I played on one of these as my personal flute for many years. This suggests that I am not the limiting factor.

I have also altered the cut of fuzzy Gemeinhardts to greatly reduce the limiting factors.

You should test them both and see what works for you best. sometimes you can get them on trial for a week or so. I personnally prefer Yamaha, the flutes make a really clear sound!! I`m not sure about Gemeinhardt flutes though.

Gemeinhardt sells silver head joints in various cuts and styles. I own a J1 thinwall and I don`t deal with "fuzz". Which Gemainhardt head joints cause fuzz or are you comparing their $200 student flutes with $1000 Yamahas?

A more fair comparison would be is the Yamaha silver plate YFL221 at $800 a better flute than the Gemeinhardt Sold Silver at $800 w/ choice of silver head joint cut.

There is a reason why Gemeinhardt is the number one flute seller in the world. For $800 bucks you get quite a bang for your buck. Sure a Powell is better, but your talking a few thousand dollars in difference.

"There is a reason why Gemeinhardt
is the number one flute seller in the world."

I beg to differ with that. No reputable flute teacher will even recommend a Gemeinhardt. From looking at recent sales, I would have to say that Yamaha is the top seller at the moment.

I also repair flutes, like Arak.
I agree with him. The overall quality is not as good. They just do not hold there adjustments.

You could spend over $2,000 on Gemeinhardts top model, when the Yamaha 221 student flute is built a heck of a lot better.
So no, you do not get more for your money with a Geminhardt.

The only reason that you may think that you are getting more bang for your buck is because Gemeinhardt cuts corners and does not produce the quality as Yamaha does. Thus, there prices being more inexpensive.

I agree that fuzziness in a sound does not necessarily make the sound bad. But what does make it bad is the embouchure cut. I think that Gemeinhardt has yet to master that.

would a gold yamaha flute be good if its custom made. (http://www.yamaha.com/) go to flutes and go under custom made and go to the last flute. It should be gold.

I was comparing similarly priced student instruments. Almost nobody in my country even plays a higher model GEmeinhardt, but from the few I have seen, which is not enough to make authoritative statements, by comparison with other similarly priced brands, they are little more than student flutes made from precious metals.

I agree with KC that Gemeinhardt just has not put enough effort into the cut of the head. all they need to do is COPY some makers who have done this well.

As in regard to the Bb key that comes loose on student flutes, Gemeinhardt just does not seem interested in keeping up with improvements that other makers have made.

Gemeinhardts used to be by far the most popular student flute here. Yamaha deservedly displaced them.

My disappointment with Yamaha student flutes is that the tone holes are no more level than on many other student flutes. I am ready to give a few pixie points to the first manufacturer to put aside complacency and REALLY deal with this problem.