Schilke 1040 FLS Bb- Flugelhorn

Fantastic sound, excellent tuning. I can say only good words about the excellent sound and tuning of the instrument. All notes are in the right place, the sound is neither too dark nor too bright (maybe a very slight tendency to the bright side). The finishing, however, is really sloppy (it seems that good finishing is not a strength of Schilke instruments). For an instrument of this price and quality, one would expect much more care to the appearance of welds, silver plating and other details. Also the design of the instrument is not optimal in ergonomic terms: as it occurs to many other fluegelhorns, the 3rd-slide trigger is in an awkward position, making it hard to hold firmly the instrument. Also the springs of the pistons were too weak to my taste: I have replaced them by Vincent-Bach springs, which made the pistons much faster and better.
All in all, if you are looking for perfect intonation with a flexible sound, the Schilke Fluegelhorn is your instrument. But you will have to close your eyes to the sloppy fabrication.

Schilke are renowned for the quality of their instruments, and this is no different. The valves are silky smooth right out of the box, and only get better as they break in. Usefully, Schilke ship the 1040FL with two tuning pipes, one for each of the common tapers used on flugelhorn mouthpieces; for those players who already have a flugelhorn mouthpiece they're happy with, this avoids the need for a 'mouthpiece safari', or going to the hassle and expense of getting a copy of the existing mouthpiece made with a different shank.

The 1040FL is extremely comfortable to hold, and the trigger is ergonomically placed to allow for easy fine tuning of the low C# and D.