Windward Flutes

Each Windward Pratten flute has a tuning-slide and an endcap with an adjustable cork assembly. The flutes are made in our regular tone-woods: Grenadilla, Mopane and African Olive. For special tone-woods like Pink Ivory, Kingwood, Verawood or other, please ask about availability and price. Rings and detail are in sterling silver or contrasting flute wood, the latter being reinforced with carbon-fibre. If requested faux ivory can be used for flute detailing.

The Windward Combo is a six piece, dual pitch patented Windward Pratten, playable in both D and Eb scales and available as a keyed or keyless instrument.

The Windward C Flute is a keyless instrument, with a single centre section, smaller toneholes and a shorter foot-joint than the Pratten. But the C flute has a strong tone, excellent harmonics and a rich clear voice. It can be ordered with a single footjoint key.

On our simple system keyed flutes, the keys are mounted on integral wooden key-blocks, which have been milled directly out of the centre-joint and foot-joint wood blanks. The keys are hand forged sterling silver, having phosphor-bronze springs, brass axles, and Valentino pads for a good seal and longevity.

Rings reinforced with carbon-fibre: All rings in contrasting wood or faux ivoire are reinforced with an underpinning of carbon fibre, unseen but adding considerable strength where necessary.

Single billet: all pieces of the instrument are cut from one long piece of wood, in sequence, for best grain match. These long billets are more costly to procure, thus we charge an extra fee for single billet flutes, see prices.

Cork stopper: Few flutes perform equally well with either cork stopper, metal faced or wood faced. Usually one cork offers a superior tone and response, while the other falls short, so normally we provide the most suitable cork with any given flute. However, in some cases, both corks work equally well, each giving a different voice to the flute, so we provide both corks with such a flute.)

Face grain: with certain pieces of our tone wood, we see fit to take advantage of the subtle improvement in tone quality that can be achieved when the embouchure (and thus also the toneholes) are cut into the face-grain.