Canasia Sports

I'm looking to purchase a used student flute for teaching myself on. My dad's old Arnold is of dubious quality at best & one local flute tech told me that I was better off taking the money that I would spend refurbishing it & get a quality used flute instead. He pointed me at Armstrong and Yamaha as the better choices for student flutes (and warned me away from Jupiter, Artley, Gemeinhart and Emerson... note that this was specifically in respect to their entry-level flutes and not necessarily a condemnation of the whole line). Yamaha's site is really nice with its comparison chart of the different models of flutes that they offer (I learned an awful lot from that chart about what the various options were). Armstrong's is a bit of a mess & I couldn't quite figure out how things worked out. A few questions: Am I correct in assuming that the Armstrong equivalent to the Yamaha 225 is the 104? And that the Yamaha 24 is an older version of the 225 model? Checking closing prices on e-bay, I saw that the sale prices for the Y225 and A104 averaged in the neighborhood of $150 and $100 respectively. Is this comparable to what I should expect to pay at my local used flute shop? Speaking of local used flute shops, any recommendations on same in the Chicago area? I'd like to stay within an hour or so's drive of downtown so as not to inconvenience whichever flute-playing friend I drag along on my flute-buying odyssey. -dh Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't.