{"product_id":"amd093-cl-mueller-micollier-penzel-1","title":"Micollier Cocuswood Conical Ring-Key Boehm, C","description":"\u003cp\u003eA fantastic player, and clearly built as a professional instrument. The response is beautiful, the tone strong and resonant, and the intonation is spot on.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt can play sweetly, and it will give you a rich, powerful tone when you ask for it, including down in the bottom register where a lot of flutes start to thin out. Even the low C keys work really well, and a good strong bottom low C comes easily. The instrument is comfortable to hold and the finger spread is relatively easy to reach, which makes the power it delivers a pleasant surprise. Players from the Irish tradition who are curious about a transitional flute of this era will find a great deal to like in that combination.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt plays at about A=440 once fully warmed up, and the tuning suggests it was originally optimised somewhere between 432 and 438 Hz. That lower pitch standard suits period repertoire written for it, and beyond any question of period practice it is simply a lovely thing to play. Sounding length is 600mm.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe key system is Boehm's conical ring-key design, the first of his two systems, and the fingering is the one modern flute players already know. The right index finger alone gives F natural, F sharp comes from the right ring finger, the G sharp is closed and taken with the left little finger, and the left thumb has both a B natural key and a B flat lever. There are two trill keys for the right hand. A player coming from a modern flute will be at home on it straight away.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fittings place the build well into the second half of the century. Boehm's earliest examples had an open-standing G sharp and no thumb B flat, where this one has the independent closed G sharp and the thumb lever that French makers adopted from the 1860s onward. The type was never simply replaced by the cylindrical flute that followed it. It kept a following among professional players who preferred its voice, and the flautist Rudolf Tillmetz moved from the cylindrical Boehm to a conical ring-key flute in 1882, after years on the newer instrument.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe head is finished with a turned wooden crown, and the tenons are cork wrapped with metal ferrules. The pads seal well throughout, and the flute has clearly been repadded and recorked at some point by someone who put real time and care into it. That work is a large part of why it is ready to play as it stands rather than needing a stop at a technician's bench first.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHead, body and foot each carry the same stamp, MICOLLIER \/ A \/ PARIS.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Irish Flute Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47782065799394,"sku":"9Q93SeZX-ELZEb60c","price":2999.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2140\/2331\/files\/1Q7A9542.jpg?v=1787345000","url":"https:\/\/www.irishflutestore.com\/products\/amd093-cl-mueller-micollier-penzel-1","provider":"Irish Flute Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}