This drone flute is 16-1/4 inches in length, with 1 inch bore diameters, and a little touch of attitude, thanks to extensive wood burning.

The mouthpiece consists of twice dyed, stabilized box elder burl, between layers of SE Asian amboyna burl, capped with additional cherry. Fetish woods start with identical birds cut from California buckeye burl, with side, or wing overlays of abalone, box elder burl, and amboyna burl, each bonded to bases of Oklahoma red cedar. The birds, as we well as areas on the box elder, were hand colorized to accent some of the natural colorization.

Inlay, beginning at the mouthpiece consists of a 4.76mm faceted almandine garnet, flanked by 4.2mm dome cut turquoise cabs. Each side of the compression chamber is accented with 22mm disks of the referenced box elder, with addl. Hand colorized pyrographics. The sound chamber, forward from the blocks includes a faceted 4.4mm Brazilian azotic topaz, as well as extensive pyrographics, and a 22x30mm Mexican crazy lace agate. In the same area, the finger holes are accented with four 4mm abalone cabs, and a 6mm dome cut rainbow topaz. Lastly, the fetish blocks include 4.4mm old Tibetan turquoise cabs set to the crowns, and 2.3mm hematite beads, set as eyes.

The flute was tuned at 72.8 degrees F, @ 61% humidity, with a wood temp of 74.5 degrees.

The instrument includes my low tech wet out prevention system, consisting of wicking cotton and alternative aluminium plugs for the nylon sheathed compression chamber. For thorough drying, it is not necessary to completely remove the blocks from the instrument. Simply loosening the ties and gently pulling the birds to the side is sufficient. In fact, you would be ill advised to completely remove the birds unless you have a great deal of time to kill, and some dental tools. Lastly, please note the barrel diameter is one inch…and there are two of them. The instrument requires a significant lung capacity from the player, to sustain various notes when using both barrels simultaneously for a significant length of time.