Intermediate Flutes
As the word suggests, something in-between handmade and beginner
When you are ready to take your playing to the next level, and you can't quite afford the expensive handmade flute. There are plenty of models offered by major flute companies, both handmade and mass production ones.
To name a few top brands with their sub brands so to say:
Powell - Sonare
Burkart - Resona
Haynes - Amadeus
Altus - Azumi
Other top brands simply offer more affordable models under the same brand, and they are actually too many to list. Brands that do mass production like Yamaha, Jupiter, Trevor James and others, also have plenty of intermediate affordable models.
Price range generally from $1000 to $5000
You can expect higher quality of workmenship like more precise mechanism, more features like C# trill, higher grade pads, silver headjoint, silver tubing, or at least higher grade material like nickel silver instead of cuppronickel which is the cheapest one used for beginner flutes. Silver plating could be thicker or just done better. Along with a better flute, you would get a nicer case and bag sometimes. They would normally still have adjustment screws.
Which one to buy?
As I said, too many choices, and all I can say is, go to your nearest flute dealer and try a few because what's more important is that the flute is set up correctly. It's assumed that you are shopping for an intermediate flute because you are ready for it, meaning you are seriously practicing, so you need to make friends with your flute dealer and a repair technician because you will need them to select your flute, and then to keep it in shape.
As with anything, you can't go wrong buying "made in Japan". You could likely get lucky with "made in the US" as well. Made in Taiwan, China, Thailand, or Indonesia only if set up by an expert flutemaker who comes from the handmade flute world, because those places are still set in their ways of mass production which means skipping important steps, or what we like to call "cheating". It's not easy to care about quality when your production manager is primarily focused on the number of flutes you can finish per day or per week. In that situation you are basically forced to cheat in order to put food on the table for your family.