Brand

Used Gemeinhardt instruments

Kurt Gemeinhardt was a fourth-generation flute maker from Markneukirchen, Germany, who apprenticed under his father and made handmade flutes in St. Gallen, Switzerland. In 1928 George Bundy of Selmer brought him to Elkhart, Indiana, and twenty years later, in 1948, he opened his own company. He meant to build a small number of professional all-silver flutes, but demand pushed him into a bigger plant in the early 1950s, then into mid-priced and beginner flutes, and student flutes like the 2SP became the core of the business. Investors owned it as Gemstone Musical Instruments from 1993 to 2011, it bought the Roy Seaman Piccolo Company in 1997, and in 2011 its Taiwanese manufacturing partner Angel Industries bought it. Headjoints and piccolos are still made in Elkhart, and flutes get final assembly in Taiwan and China. The model numbers follow a code. The number is the series, O means offset G, SP silver-plated, SH a sterling headjoint, S a sterling body and B a B footjoint, and Gemeinhardt's online serial chart dates flutes back to 1954.

4 models we cover.