Hello and Welcome to my Website!
My name is Fergus Davidson and I am the owner and maker of FD headjoints. I am also a professional flautist and have been in the music business for over 30 years now.
My Story
I started making piccolo headjoints around 4 years ago and I'd like to tell you about my product.
A piccolo headjoint consists of a socket, embouchure hole and crown. The crown is attached to a spindle. There is a length of cork that ends with a metal plate, usually silver that aligns around 8mm from the centre of the embouchure hole.
The cork is slightly larger than the diameter of the bore to ensure a tight seal with no air leaks and is generally difficult to move.
From an early age I had a curiosity about how things worked. This curiosity caused me to try to re-pad my flute when I was 18. It didn't end well but hey, now I can re-pad flutes.
More importantly I was never content with accepting things that I felt could be improved and this led me to discover that moving the cork assembly on a piccolo headjoint had a profound effect on its sound. An effect that has transformed the way I play and how I approach some reportoire.
(pictured A. Braun piccolo headjoint)
Moving it away from the embouchure hole makes the lower octave richer and stronger and likewise, moving it towards the embouchure hole makes the top octave easier. These are small movements that make a big difference, especially for the lower octave.
The difficulty with this is that to move the cork assembly requires turning the stopper at the end of the piccolo or inserting a cleaning rod and pushing the assembly. There are a few problems with these methods. Most piccolo headjoint stoppers are too small and smooth to grab hold of to turn and the cork is so tight inside the headjoint that it won't move easily, leaving you with a third option which is to stick the cleaning rod inside and push the cork out. This may also be difficult and will certainly damage the surface of the metal plate, which will in turn effect the quality of sound.
Obviously the biggest problem is that to attempt any of these methods requires time and a lot of messing about, and on stage that can just be distracting. Not to mention that you also have no idea how far you've moved the cork assembly.
If you have played around with this idea of moving the cork assembly, do you know where that sweet spot is? Can you move the assembly accurately within a few seconds and then return it to centre just as accurately without the use of the line on the end of your cleaning rod?
Well yes you can, because I have come up with a design that makes this easy to do. Or rather, I thought I had. I discovered that this design was around as early as the 1700s, and in the 1800s there were even fancier methods, with Rudall & Rose going so far as to invent a headjoint where turning the crown on the headjoint not only moved the cork assembly but also lengthened the headjoint through a system of threaded rods, cams and inner lining tubes. This system was genius for that period and to be honest hasn't really been rivalled today. It allowed the player to tune to the different pitches that abounded around Europe and the world, or just the pitch of the player sitting next to them. So my design is not my design really, but the objective of it totally is, and that is to strengthen parts of the instrument at very short notice for the enjoyment of the player and maybe also the conductor, audience or even the recording engineers.
The mechanism is simple. I have replaced the cork inside the headjoint with a simple threaded silver rod attached at one end to a brass stopper soldered to a silver plate and the other end to a 12 point crown to help with grip, that when rotated allows the silver rod to poke out of the hole running through the crown.
The rod has 2 one-millimetre lines that indicate when you have moved the stopper assembly to 9mm and 10mm from centre. Returning the assembly to the original 8mm from centre is a matter of simply turning the crown in the opposite direction until the rod is flush with the end of the crown. Two rubber 'O' rings on the crown and stopper form an airtight seal against the tube, thereby negating the need for a fat piece of immovable cork. I have also discovered that removing the cork creates an extra chamber for the sound to resonate through the instrument, making my wooden headjoints more responsive.
At the other end of the headjoint is a simple removable tenon and sleeve made from titanium. After much research of different materials I discovered that titanium, being incredibly light and strong, produces a very firm link between the body and the headjoint which significantly improves the overall stability of the instrument.
The system I use can be made to fit most piccolos upon request.
Kindly get in touch to inquire more.
