Review : a nose flute by Atelier EO

Jean-Philippe Minchin is a French craftsman who's specialized in traditional instruments, simply playable by anyone. His workshop is called Atelier EO and is based in the Pyrénées region (South west of France, near Spain). Mr. Minchin is focused on the esthetics and in using local or recycled ressources.
In the wind section of his website, among other flutes like sioux'siotankas, pygmys' flutes or rhombi, features a nose flute, in beech, cypress or wild cherry.

I was proud to find a french nose flute maker (Mr. Mellier stopped his production) and I ordered the EO nose flute, and received it within a week.




The flute was nicely packed in a cellophane pocket, accompanied with an user manual and a laced, more dedicated to hang the instrument around your neck than in a hand-free playing purpose.


/TR>My first sentiment was mixed. On one hand, the design was neat and original, the wood pieces were beautiful, but on the other one, I immediately noticed some imprecisions in the making...Some wood edges are chipped, the assembling is approximative, and worst of all, the labium is not neat at all, lacking of a sweet and smoothg finish.

It is a shame, since other details are well made or designed...






On the sound side, the flute behaves as guessed, not because of its designed, but because of its lack of a sufficient finishing... Well, it works! But surely can have been much better sounding, and stay beautiful...

Here is a sound sample, played by the Nosy Diva. You can notice the difficulty to reach high sharps...



---

Links :

>> To Atelier EO website
>> To the contact page