Most flutes give you a single line at a time, so laying a drone under a melody usually means a second player or some kind of looping trick. This build tackles that directly: the maker woodturned a flute where several pipes share one central connector, letting a single player produce polyphony on the spot.
The construction is what grabs me. Four wooden pipe bodies meet a central manifold at right angles, joined through a pale cylindrical hub, and the whole instrument came off the lathe. The stock is locally harvested mayday tree, lilac and beech, which is a nice bit of local sourcing. One of the pipes, set against the shoulder, works as an active drone and carries no note holes at all.
The maker shaped the layout for the shoulder for ergonomic reasons, and that reads as a deliberate design choice rather than an accident. Tuning is diatonic G, though the maker says it is sometimes set to 432 Hz. As for naming, the design has no existing name, and the maker points out that multiple pipe flutes and drone flutes already exist. Even so, this one reads as its own instrument to me. Apparently the concept arrived during hypnagogia, which is as good a workshop as any.
One open point: the maker has not explained how the central connector splits blown air between the pipes, and I would genuinely like to know. What is clear is the payoff, a synchronized multi-tone harmony played with both hands at once. That is a strong result for a turned project.