Many say that annual COA's are neccesary at least once a year. However, I have spoken to many flautists in my area, who say they do not get annual COA's. Some have been without annual COA's (other than repair) for more than 5 years.
What do you think? Is it just like the all silver body AND headjoint, all a way to make money?

or is it truly a necessary thing?

depends on how often you play, how gentle you push down the keyes, etc, I don't get one each year, but every two or so

i'd say if you are at school and marching with it you probably do need the COA, my flute has been almost 2 years with out on and it still plays (only because a technician won't touch it though). but i would say once a flute gets too a certain age it probably does need the service more regularly(a bit like a car)

so technically, you would only need to pay for oiling (considering your pads are leveled and you clean your flute yourself) every 2-3 years or so?

A professional repair person actually told me you can oil the flute yourself. I use valve oil on my flute.

can the same oil be used on a flute that is used on a clarinet?

It varies from player to player for a whole number of reasons. It never hurts to have your instrument checked regularly either.

If you need to have your instrument adjusted every 6 months, do it. If you only need to have it done every 5 years, then that's what you need.

No one here can tell you how often you need to have a COA.

Most people don't realize their flutes are not performing as best as they can because these changes happen slowly and you tend to compensate until the flute reaches a failure point. Then you have to get it serviced.

The other side of the coin is having a repair tech who spends a lot of time fixing an instruments and the player can't appreciate or recognize the level of the repair because they have compensated their technique to a poorly maintained instrument for so long.

You can always ask for an estimate rather than just saying I need to have a COA done. And honest tech will do only what is necessary and explain everything to you before proceeding with the repair.

As with all things of this nature..."Caveat Emptor"

Joe B