Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

I had the pleasure of meeting Colyn in August of 2010 during a Chikuzen workshop weekend.  Having some experience in making wind instruments Colyn and I hit it off quite well and spoke at some length concerning his endeavor to craft shakuhachi out of wood.  At the time I had definitely had a preference for playing bamboo flutes because of the differences in sound that I hear between shakuhachi made from different materials.  However, A few months later I began thinking that it makes sense to play shakuhachi made from native materials that I could play outside here in the Rocky Mountains without fear of cracking some of the bamboo flutes that I love.  I turned back to Colyn, who had recent been offering his Shin Sei flutes for audition.

First Colyn sent me a mulberry flute to try.  I was impressed with the flute to begin with but asked Colyn if he could make a custom flute for me based upon some tweaks that I would like to have in my shakuhachi.  Colyn agreed, and we settled on a Shin Sei Shakuhachi made from a really beautiful curly purpleheart wood (see pictures below).

I have had the flute for a few weeks now and am very pleased with it.  I have experience with two of Colyn’s flutes now, the original mulberry he had me try, and the custom purpleheart.  Both flutes were very easy to play, overwhelmingly in tune, and have a pleasing voice.  In essence Colyn makes a great flute for the price and they have the additional perk of being resistant to environmental issues.  In particular I think that Shin Sei Shakuhachi are an excellent choice for beginners because of their ease of performance and economical price.

The details:
Mulberry flute:  This is more of the standard dimension of flute Colyn has been making.  The flute was very easy to play and similar in performance to Brian Ritchie’s assessment earlier of the Shin Sei he had auditioned.  The flute takes a ton of air, is loud, suitable for modern, honkyoku (I am a dokyoku player), and I would think decent for sankyoku, though I am not expert when it comes to ensemble music.  All notes come easily and clearly, with a really nice woody tone.  The balance of volume was also very good.  The draw backs for me on this flute was that it did not have as much back-pressure as I like in a shakuhachi, it was too light for my liking (which was a surprise to me) and the mouthpiece/chin rest was not wide enough. 

Purpleheart flute:  This is the flute that I purchased from Colyn.  The wood is a specialty so I paid a bit more for it.   With the modifications to the basic design this flute really suits me well.  I was surprised at how well the flute sounds, and its versatility.  While it is not a replacement for my bamboo flutes, it serves a great stand-in to go where the other flutes will not go- into the wilderness, or in my office (12% humidity).

Some pictures of the purpleheart flute are below: