ALTUS Japanese Handmade Flute | 1707 'PS'
Completely Handmade to Order
Pure Silver (99.7%) Headjoint & Body
14K Gold Riser
Sterling Silver Keys
Soldered Toneholes
C# Trill Key
B Footjoint
French Pointed-Arm Keys
Split-E Mechanism
Offset G
Open Holes
Each Altus flute comes with a hard case, soft carry cover, cleaning rod, inside cleaning cloth and outside cleaning cloth.
ALTUS
For over 30 years, Altus has hand-crafted flutes that embody the ideals of vintage inspiration and modern technology. Created by Master Flute Maker Shuichi Tanaka, each Altus flute reflects his passion to combine the finest playing flutes with the finest materials and artistry.
The meticulous design of the Altus flute and its acclaimed Altus/Bennet scales offers excellent intonation, carefully tuned harmonics and balanced registers. The masterfully hand-sculpted headjoints and precision tubings produce the remarkable sound of the Altus flute.
Pure 997 Silver – Altus’ exclusive powdered Pure Silver (PS) tube is made possible only through highly innovative sinter technology. Normally, pure silver is too soft for successful flute tube production because it requires trace amounts of harder metals in the alloy to give it sufficient strength. The traditional method of creating a melted metal alloy results in pure silver tubes unsuitable for flute making. Sinter technology creates hard tubes of pure silver by compacting the silver under great pressure without melting it into a soft alloy. This unique process produces a dense and brilliant hard silver tube with supreme projecting qualities.
ALTUS was the first flute maker to manufacture instruments from this material and also supplies it to other makers. In contrast to the ALTUS “PSD”, the tonehole risers of the ALTUS “PS” are soldered on. This results in far greater purity and clarity of sound, the instrument has high tonal flexibility, it is homogeneous across the whole gamut, and the enormous projection capacity across all registers will certainly not remain unnoticed. A truly masterful instrument, made by an artist for artists. Denis Bouriakov, who is a long time Altus PS player, had this to say about his instrument:
“The PS, with its unique sinterised tube, has depth and colour similar to platinum. Strength and power push this flute to open with amazing projection and intensity.”
What We Like
In terms of sound, we find Altus flutes to be extremely malleable, colourful, and offer great projection and evenness throughout the registers. Perception of sound is subjective though so you will need to try them and see if they suit you.
What is not subjective is how good their mechanism is, and it is one of the best there is. You really need to run your fingers over these keys yourself in order to appreciate it. Unlike a lot of other companies that have switched over to a pinless mechanism over the years, Altus never did, and we believe it is because they simply never found a reason to. They have absolutely perfected their mechanism. It is quick to respond, light, silent and if setup properly and looked after well, stays in adjustment for an extremely long time. It completely satisfies even some of the most technically demanding and proficient flutists in the world, and best of all, they’ve included the same design on all their flutes - from their entry level professional quality flute, the model 807, all the way up to the venerable model 1807 (AL). The only thing lacking is a fancy name to help market it better. Oh well, you’ll just have to try it and see for yourself.
