Armstrong Step-Up Model 703 Alto Flute

The straight and curved headjoint options allow players to use the correct headjoint for optimum comfort while playing. The Armstrong headjoint cut offers players crisp response and a rich, warm tone. Pointed key arms add elegance and style. The 703 "Heritage" Alto flute offers the quality and dependability that players come to expect from the Armstrong name.

Silver plated straight and curved headjoints, silver plated body, silver plated mechanism, pointed key arms, C foot, french style case with cover.

In 1931, William Teasdale Armstrong, a highly respected craftsman and a C.G. Conn shop foreman, founded his small flute repair shop in Elkhart, Indiana. Word of his skill and uncompromising commitment to quality quickly spread, and it wasn’t long before he was asked to manufacture instruments for professional musicians.

The proud Armstrong heritage passed on to son Edward, who apprenticed under his father and shared his father’s concern for quality.  Edward’s concern for quality went well beyond the crafting of professional-level instruments. He recognized a need to provide quality instruments to a rapidly growing number of students and community musicians.

In the 1970s, Armstrong developed a “new” flute scale in conjunction with Albert Cooper.  Prior to this new scale, flute makers would correct the tuning of A=435 commonly found on flutes by cutting the end of the headjoint to bring pitch up to A=440.  While this served to correct the pitch in the center registers, all other octaves did not play in tune.  With the Armstrong and Albert Cooper changes, the headjoint tapers and tone hole locations and dimensions were all redesigned to dramatically improve the performance of the instrument, in what would become today’s 102, 103, and 104 model flute platforms. 

In 1984 the Armstrong woodwind company would be sold to King Musical Instruments, which later merged with C.G. Conn in 1985 to form United Musical Instruments (UMI). 

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