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| Powell Sonaré PS-601 |
By Steven A. Wasser
President, Verne Q. Powell Flutes, Inc.
When we decided to co-manufacture a step-up flute in 2002,
our conceptualization of Sonaré, with a Chinese body and a Powell headjoint,
was ground-breaking. I vividly recall
one of our long-time Powell players coming up to us at the convention that
summer. With her hand on her hip, she
demanded to know, “Why Powell is making a flute in China?” I explained our concept of putting a
professional headjoint on an inexpensive flute body, since the headjoint was
far and away the most important acoustical component of the flute. She tried the flute then said, “I’ll take
that one.”
We’ve come a long way since we introduced the Sonaré flute
in 2002. For one thing, at last count
there were 14 other flute makers who had copied our concept. For another, the Sonaré flute has evolved.
When we introduced Sonaré we were frankly paranoid about
doing something that might jeopardize the Powell image. Thus, we were extremely careful to
distinguish between the flute body made in China, and the headjoint made by
Powell in the United States. The
engraving on the headjoint was the normal Powell Signature headjoint engraving,
but the Powell name was nowhere to be seen on the body of the flute. We engraved “Sonaré” on the barrel of the
flute.
During the first few years of Sonaré’s existence we wound up
using 4 different scales made by our Chinese partner. We ultimately standardized on a single scale
– the one we though was best – but were still not satisfied. Since the acoustics of the flute are determined
first by the headjoint and secondarily by the scale, we decided to focus our
engineering talents on the body. To make
a long story short, in 2006 we came up with a technology we’ve called “Zinki,”
that allows us to economically extrude tone holes at Powell with our Modern
Powell Scale. Since then we’ve used
Zinki to extrude all Sonaré flute bodies, as well as our Conservatory and
Signature flutes. Even Custom gold flutes
with extruded tone holes are done on Zinki.
(If you’re curious about the technology you can look up U.S. patent
#7,420,109. It describes our approach
for putting a big ball through a small hole.)
By using flute bodies made at Powell with the Modern Powell
Scale, we felt we had made a large leap in quality. At that point we decided Sonaré could become
a Powell flute. Sonaré then became a
model designation, just like Signature or Conservatory.
However, we aren’t done making improvements. Starting in spring, 2015, the Sonaré flutes
being assembled for us in China will be utilizing cups that are the same size
and shape as the Powell flute cups used for Conservatory and Signature
flutes.
One final point.
Because we make the body and headjoint of the flute at our Maynard
workshop, and because we do the final finishing at Powell, we have an
instrument where more than 50% of the content is U.S. content and where final
finishing takes place in the USA. Thus,
our Powell Sonaré flutes qualify as “Assembled in USA.” To the best of our knowledge no other flute
in this category qualifies for that country of origin labeling.
