Crowns for your Flute Headjoint - Flutecentric : The Flute Player's Handbook

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Crown for headjoint — *The crown on a flute is the part at the very top of the headjoint which unscrews.*

Did you know you can actually buy a new crown for your flute headjoint? Just show up at any flute club commercial exhibit or the National Flute Association Annual Convention and you will be amazed at the bits and parts you can add to your current flute.

Why would you buy a new crown for your flute?

Flutist Patricia George has done much experimenting with crowns made by Robert Bigio of London, Jeff Weissman and many of her own making. She even consulted a physicist as to why different crowns changed the tone on a flute. He concluded that the weight of the crown at the end of the headjoint controlled the vibration of the stem assembly. If the stem vibrated too slowly, the tone was spread and diffused and if the stem vibrated too fast or not at all, the tone was tight. The answer was to find the correct vibration for each flute and flute player which is such a complex problem that they deduced it is better left to trial and error. When working on sound with her students, she found that the difference of .001 grams could be heard in the sound.