How to decide which brand of flute to buy, how much to spend, and why to avoid a cheap and nasty flute!

Jim, if you want to hear the comparison between my $10,000 flute and a $100 Aldi flute, have a look at this video here.
And then if you are wondering whether to buy a $100 flute (short answer is no!), check out why in the video here! 

Feel free to ask your flute question for an upcoming Flute Q&A by clicking here

Which brand of flute to buy

Welcome to flute Q and A number 32. I'm Jane Cavanagh. I'm a flute teacher. This question comes from Jim and it's a really good question. He says, Hi, Jane. I'm seriously considering picking up the flute. Would you recommend a good flute to buy? I don't want something cheap. Just something that I can use in my band and would be a quality product.

Quality flute 

This is the best question, Jim, the way you ask this question, I'm so proud of you. You ask the right questions. You said I don't want something cheap, just something that I can use that's quality. That is the perfect question to ask, because there are so many cheap flutes.

Cheap flute don't last long

You can buy them on eBay, they’re different colours. You can buy super cheap ones that look like they're good quality. But as soon as the price is a $100  or $200 or even $300, you're like, mm, that's not gonna last very long.

Not recommended to buy cheap flute

So I did a video on this actually. I bought a flute at Aldi for a hundred dollars, hundred Australian dollars. And then I compared it to my fluid, which is $10,000. And my, the outcome was like, you know what? It works really well for a hundred dollars. This works really well, but I don't recommend buying it.

Flute repairers will not fix cheap flutes

And the reason is because even though it works really well now in two weeks, in two months it’s not going to work really well. Like guaranteed it is going to go out of whack and there are flute, any good flute, repairer refuses to fix, to service a rubbish flute because they will service it and then a week or two later, it's not working again. And they're like, well, fat, lot of good that did.

So I don't recommend buying a cheap flute, even though sometimes out of the box, they work really well. Sometimes they don't work really well out of the box. And that's what I said in this video, I'll put a link to  the video for you below.

Tone quality won't last long with cheap flutes

And then I got some comments on this video that I wrote going, how can you recommend that you buy a hundred dollars flute? I'm like, oh, I think that sounded like I was recommending it. I'm definitely not recommending it.

Should you buy a $100 flute?

So then I did another video called, Should you buy a $100 flute? The answer was no. Unless you are a flute teacher and you know the risk that you're getting into. A hundred dollars, not very much for a flute, it might work for a little while. Maybe you wanna demonstrate it. You can tell whether it's working or not, and you can help your student know whether it's working or not, but it's just not worth the risk.

Pick a reputable flute brand

So anyway, Jim, back to your question, yes. I would suggest that you go into a real life flute shop, or if it's online, you can have a real life conversation on the phone or in an email. And you know that it's a reputable shop. See which brands they have of good student flutes. So just base model. Good, good brand student flutes. There are heaps of really good brands of student flutes. So this is not exhaustive.

Quality student flutes

I like Yamaha. I like Jupiter, but there are a lot more brands. So I'm not recommending those over other good brands because it depends on which country you're in. Jim, buy a brand new, brand new, not secondhand, good quality student flute. Base model, student flute, good brand, brand new. That's it.

Second hand flute only if it has been serviced

I should have said that at the start of the video. Good brand, brand new, student flute, base model. <laugh> I really should have just said that at the start. Anyway Jim, that's what you want. Don't buy a secondhand flute unless of course it's a good flute shop and they can say, yes, we serviced it. Yes, we recommend it. Yes, it's a good job, but it really has to be a very good flute shop to be able to do that. So go in and talk to a real life human, see which brands they have, see which they recommend.

Purchase a reputable flute beginner brand

Don't buy something that's cheap and nasty. Buy a reputable brand student flute. The two links to those videos I'll put for you below. You might like to watch them. In the meantime, Jim, once you get your new flute, if you would like to, if you can already play a bit and you would like to improve your tone on the flute, join me in the free minicourse it's at www.flute.school/free.

Free flute mini course

And you can instantly no, not can, you will instantly improve your tone. It fixes your embouchure and it gets your better sound on the flute.

 So good luck with your flute playing Jim. And it's great that you've got a band and I love that you asked such a good question. See you later.