Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Hola Henrique,  Any pics of your Utaguchi?

I just made Hi Go on a Gyokusui more responsive. Much of it was due to the top opening being too big and the utaguchi dip being too deep.

- Perry

Hi Jeff,

Jeff wrote:

Yungflutes wrote:

Hola Henrique,  Any pics of your Utaguchi?

Much of it was due to the top opening being too big and the utaguchi dip being too deep.

- Perry

Hi Perry,
I posted on this topic yesterday, but it didn't make it for some reason, so I'll try again.  I was wondering about this quote.  When you say the utaguchi dip was too deep, what do you mean?  This is interesting to me and possibly helpful to know.  Also, what did you do to make the dip less deep?
cheers
Jeff

Here are some photos of the Gyokusui 1.6. It is a fabulous player except that Hi Go sort of "disappears" whe playing a piece of music. If you were to play scales, you can hit it OK. So, through deductive methods, I found the problem on this particular shakuhachi being around the utaguchi.



It wasn't a terribly deep utaguchi, just a hair too deep.



We decided that caliber of instrument would do best with a new horn inlay to raise the edge.



Both internal sides of the utaguchi were also a bit funneled out. So I filled it with bamboo dust and CA glue



I refashioned the sides to be more straight up and out of the bore.



The first coat of urushi is cured this morning. The blue tape is at the top 1/4 spot for the pressure point in Kan. It doesn't always work but this time it was spot on!  That's my coffee, not a cup of urushi. I take it black, no sugar.



I left a 1cm piece of paper in the bore at that spot and explored the top. After a bit of sluething, I found that two pieces made Hi Go Spring to life with much more accessibility. BTW, I am fortunate to be able to play a  freshly urushied flute. This speeds up the process.



I ended up raising it only a hair more than 1mm. It will need a few more coats of urushi to bring it up to what the two pieces of paper did.

I've worked on Hi Go on many flutes. It takes working from a combination of angles to deduce what is happening. I also did a slight bit of undercutting. Undercutting changes the tone of the flute so it has to be done with care. Well, everything does. Rarely will the same things work on another flute with the same problem. That's the fun of it!

Hope this helps,
Perry

Hey guys, looks like I wrote on Jeff's post by hitting the edit button instead of the quote button. One of the pitfalls of being a moderator!

Musgo de Pedra wrote:

I was also wondering if the ambient temperature is afecting the sensibility on the flute as well...I know that the temperature really work on flute playability... This morning a began to play on my main 1.8 jiari and it was hard to play some notes on it too... I bought this jiari on october of 2007 and it was Spring here... now three days before the winter arise, the temperature fell from 15° celsius to 5°... so it's the first winter with a good flute by my side and I'm feeling how much it's really affected...

I don't remember the exact temperature on the day I started the 2.2, but I think it was about 15°...  this variation in temperature made me fall into mistakes?

Henrique,

I think we all know that a flute feels different when it is cold to when it is warm. So, I always play a flute for at least 20 minutes before I do any tuning. By that time, the flute will be where it should be so that the owner will also have the same experience with playing (after 20 minutes).

Extreme temperature differences will affect how it responds but I don't know if that will cause a flute to be dysfunctional. I have had the experience of leaving a flute on stage under theater lights for an hour before playing. The flute is very sharp then, but everything works.

Happy blowing my friend, Perry

Thanks Perry and Henrique,
The pictures along with advice is invaluable.

I was so impressed at the flute building expertise of Jeff Cairns... (Great photos and info Perry)

Hi 
 
Here are some pictures of the flute I was talking about...   





















Here I got a question...when I started the flute I opened the nodes until I assumed that Ro was sounding good... so I left the node below the way it was but working on Hi Go I tried to sand it a little to see if the meris here would begin to sound easier...and they did...before sand it, the node in the exact direction from the fourth hole to the bottom was about 3,5 mm...now it has about 2 mm. Does this node affected the air stream enough to make Hi Go became difficult? It's the first time that something like this happens on the flutes I made... I used to had a lot of different problems, so this is a new and good learning... 
 
 
Oh Edosan... my hand was trembling with the emotion of post some pics and it slipped to the wrong button in the moment I clicked... I'm sorry...     : {p 
 
 
Peace

Last edited by Musgo da Pedra (2008-06-20 09:21:05)

Musgo da Pedra wrote:

Hi 
 

Here I got a question...when I started the flute I opened the nodes until I assumed that Ro was sounding good... so I left the node below the way it was but working on Hi Go I tried to sand it a little to see if the meris here would begin to sound easier...and they did...before sand it, the node in the exact direction from the fourth hole to the bottom was about 3,5 mm...now it has about 2 mm. Does this node affected the air stream enough to make Hi Go became difficult? It's the first time that something like this happens on the flutes I made... I used to had a lot of different problems, so this is a new and good learning...

Hole Henrique. Nice looking flute. The utaguchi angles look pretty good. The top from the side view seems a bit horizontal, but most likely not the culprit to the problem you are having. My guess is that it is due to a resonance spot (pressure point) being too big, a misplaced hole... or something else.

Try dropping a tuning bead back to one of the areas you removed nodal material from. And then try other areas such as near the top of the utaguchi and all around the thumb hole.

Good luck, Perry

Henrique, make sure that the utaguchi face is absolutely flat.  By the side view picture of the blowing end of your shakuhachi, it appears that there is some curve to it.  I have had trouble in the past with this part and found that a slightly curved face will cause unwanted situations.  I can't be specific about the kind of problems, but sound was 'less easy' to make when the face had a curve to it.

Hi Henrique,
As I said, I'm not entirely sure that the flatness of the utaguchi face has effect on sound, but my own experiments suggest that it does.  I don't know the physics of it though.  Comments from more knowledgeable makers on this would be very welcome.