I bought my current Sonare with the intention of mixing and matching a body that I like better (not that I hate the Sonare body or anything, but I adore the Powell headjoint). I'm interested in learning how a headjoint is fitted to a body that it wasn't made for.

Is the headjoint reshaped to fit the body or vice versa? What exactly is done to achieve a proper fit?

Just so there are no misunderstandings, I'm not trying to do this fitting myself, I just want to understand how it's done so there aren't any surprises. ;-)

The tenon of the headjoint is shrunk or expanded with a tool.

So if I wanted the headjoint to fit in two different bodies, they'd both have to be the same size?

Agreed with Kara, mostly is the headjoint that is adjusted. There are cases though in which the tenon of the body is adjusted, but this requires much more work and care. Not recommended, in my opinion.

And yes, they'd have to be the same size, or one of them slightly greater, so you use some sort of tape (plumbers tape) in the headjoint to maintaint it in place (accoustically not the best solution...)

I see. Thanks for explaining how it works! :-)

My regular 'fancy' flute and my backup flute have the same size barrel/tenon. Well, one flute is very slightly larger, but I can swap headjoints between flutes (and I have several headjoints right now) without having anything re-fitted, or using tape. One flute is a Pearl and the other is a Yamaha.

If you have a headjoint with a drastically different size than the barrel, changing the HJ tenon to fit might alter the headjoint's characteristics. A headjoint has a taper to it, it is smaller diameter at the crown than at the flute tenon end. If that taper is changed enough, the response of the headjoint might change, too. I have had some technicians who won't fit a headjoint that is too far different, because they don't want to damage an expensive headjoint.

Wall thickness can also come into play. For example, if you try to fit a thin wall headjoint onto a thickwall flute, the size difference can be too great to expand the tenon to fit the flute. In such cases, the only real option is to replace the barrel (receiver) on the flute with a smaller size that matches the headjoint tenon size. Unfortunately, that can be a very expensive option, if the flute body is sterling silver or especially if it's gold.

i would have to disagree with music man in replacing the barrel on the flute to take a thin wall head there is no reason why you could not put a sleve inside the existing barrel to take the head

even on a gold flute you would be able to sleve it with sterling silver and it would be a relitivly easy job to do and keep the cost down to a minimum.

i would estermate it takeing around 2 hrs and if it was expanded inside the barrel there would be no need to strip the flute down because you wouldent have to solder it in

the other option would be to put a sleve on the head tennon.

adamrussell, I was not advocating changing the barrel on the flute, but that is the scenario a well known flute shop told me when I was shopping for a new headjoint. I would not have allowed them to do that. The sleeve can be used provided the tenon and barrel receiver are not too close in size, because then the sleeve would be too thin (i.e. like aluminum foil) and it would not be sturdy enough to withstand constant insertions/removals. If the sizes are that close, the tenon can usually be expanded to fit the existing barrel receiver.