Closed Hole Keys - Part I

This week, a customer with a Powell that had closed hole keys (American cups) stopped by the repair shop.  He had several questions about the closed-hole keys, so we thought we would share the answers!  In this first post of our two-part series, we wanted to address his main question -- changing the keys.  Although he had owned his Powell for many, many years, he started thinking about perhaps changing over to open hole keys (French cups).  So, he asked Rachel if this could be done...

Rachel replied that technically, anything is possible, but she wouldn't recommend making that sort of a change, because the entire flute mechanism would have to be rebuilt.  You may recall our discussion about changing the mechanism from a previous post which you can read by following this link.  It is a process that is extremely complicated, time consuming, expensive, and well, simply not very practical.  In fact, Rachel tells us that in a case like this, it would be better to simply purchase a new flute with open-hole keys.  Also, she said that with a major rebuilding process, changes would have to be made to the flute, and anytime you make a major change, you won't know exactly how the flute will play until after the repair is complete.  Her main advice in this situation is, "If you like the way your flute plays and sounds, don't change it."  That certainly makes sense!