The Gary head joint is the closest thing to perfection I have encountered. It has all the rich round color I loved about my old Haynes, but is faster articulating and better at color changing. I think this is partly because the embouchure hole is quite small. I feel the instrument is more efficient, but there is none of the buzz and sameness I have encountered on other makers' new heads.

David has looked carefully at the many flutes that passed through my hands over the past several years, and made subtle changes to his cutting technique as he made discoveries about why these old guys are so great along the way. I was looking for something that would do what my old Haynes did before it was sadly ruined (don't let anyone tell you they can make your head joint better). My haynes was always persnickety in the low register, but I used the same flute for 30 years and was totally used to it. Finally giving up on the instrument after realizing it would never do what it had done, I started searching and along the way wandered through 4 gold flutes, and about 20 silver ones-Haynes, Powell, Lot, Bonneville, Rive. All of these instruments were made before 1960(like me).

I knew I wanted an old flute because the recordings I grew up loving of Rampal and Baker were on old flutes, with old scales. They had gorgeous tones, unlike anything I could reproduce on new flutes, and unlike anything I heard being done now live or recorded. I think partly this is because of the expanded harmonics in the old flutes. That is, the scales are longer, and do not have the strange corrections (so-called) that are made on the new flutes. But I also knew a lot of the sounds was of course in the head, and was determined to find one that would make my old haynes sing again. That flute was stolen from me twice and returned, so I knew I had to play it somehow.

David came up with the idea of naming the heads after me, because we spent time daily discussing my particular technique. he was able to incorporate how i play into what he made, so that these heads were like putting on a suit that fit me perfectly.

Of course there is variety among the heads. Some are bigger sounding and faster, others more etheric (my choice always) in the 3rd register. I have not played one dud among the 28 made so far.

If you have an ear for color and are looking for the most expressive head in the world, this is it.

~Gary Schocker~