David Straubinger: Flutemaker and Pad Innovator

I grew up on a small farm in El Cajon, California, near San Diego; my family moved there from Toledo, Ohio in 1943, when I was two years old. I had an older sister, a twin sister, and a younger brother. At that time the street we lived on, Anza Street, was a rough dirt road. I remember as kids we were always getting styes in our eyes from the dust of the road.

We raised chickens and hogs, and also had a milk cow. We had lots of cats who were always at the back door waiting to be fed. I had a horse and spent lazy summer days riding in the hills nearby. It was a great place to grow up.

In 1946 my dad's parents, who we kids called Pop and Nana, moved from Toledo to El Cajon. It was great to have them living close by, right next door. Pop grew lots of fruit trees?peaches, apricots, plums?and raised a very complete garden of vegetables. We ate well. Pop wasted nothing, and once decided to make wine from his grapes. The wine didn?t turn out very well, but it did make great vinegar, which Mom used on our salads for years. We had little money, but as kids we had no idea that we were poor.

Dad had a nice workshop with a drill press, table saw, jigsaw and other tools. I took great pleasure in the shop. I enjoyed making things. Many things. One project I had was making stilts. I kept building them higher and higher--the last ones I made were so tall I had to mount them from the garage roof.

We had a nice hill at the back of the property, and I spent many hours building carts that the neighbors and I could use to race down the hill. I remember once coming down the curvy road going to the top of our hill, Merritt Drive, on our bicycles. One of the kids coming down was hit by a car that was racing up the hill; the car just drove on. Fortunately, he was not hurt badly. I think he lost a tooth out of the deal.

I always had jobs to do at home but also jobs working for other people. From an early age I mowed lawns. I also did some work for the local newspaper, the El Cajon Valley News. Over several summers I helped rebuild 3 large linotype machines. I loved doing detailed work like that. When we finished rebuilding the machines they all functioned well, but not many years later the News changed over to using more modern printing techniques.

I also worked for a painting company that was located just across the street. They did high quality work and I learned a lot from it, including that I did not want to do that for the rest of my life.

When I was young, I played flute, and then oboe as well. I became more serious on the oboe in high school, and played with the San Diego Civic Youth Orchestra throughout high school.

I graduated from high school in 1960 and spent one year in college in San Diego before I received a scholarship to study oboe at the Jordan College of Music at Butler University in Indianapolis. After a year there, I spent the next summer traveling down the Ohio River on a barge, playing with the American Wind Symphony. In the fall, I began a year of studies at the Juilliard School in New York on full scholarship. The following summer I spent in Aspen, studying on scholarship at the Aspen Music Festival and School. In 1963, I joined the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and married my wife, Helen. In 1967 our daughter, Melissa, was born, and in 1970, our son Joel joined our family. (Helen and I later separated, and then divorced in 2000.)

I played oboe with the Symphony for six years. We had just a 36-week season, which meant we were all basically unemployed during the summers. Players drove dump trucks, painted houses, and took other types of jobs. My summers were spent working for the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) in the instrument repair department, where I built on my skills as a repairman.

In 1970, I started my own woodwind repair business, Straubinger Woodwinds. My shop was in the basement of my home. I did repairs for professional players, students, and schools, as well as taught flute and oboe lessons a couple of evenings a week.

I spent a lot of my time working on flutes, and felt a growing frustration with the design of the felt pads being used. Leaks would develop quickly between the pad and tone hole. The flute is the weakest tone generator of all instruments, so leaks affect it more than other instruments. I had some ideas for improvement. I began to focus more on flute and pad design and received my first of seven patents for pad design in 1985. At the same time, I developed the precision repair techniques used in installing and maintaining the pads, which are now used in flutes, piccolos, clarinets, and oboes throughout the world.

With the encouragement and support of mentor Bickford (Bic) Brannen at Brannen Brothers Flutes, in 1989 Straubinger Woodwinds became Straubinger Flutes. Along with designing a new type of pad, I began to build custom flutes for professional flutists and serious students. My son Joel had worked with me in the business from a young age and soon joined the business full time, himself becoming a master flutemaker and skilled repair technician.

The business grew as we further developed the Straubinger Pad and the Straubinger Flute, and continued performing repairs for some of the most renowned flutists in the world. In 1998, we moved from the basement shop to a new property with a freestanding shop building that would give us the room we needed to expand.

Straubinger Flutes now has several employees, dedicated repair offices, a pad department, and a machine shop. We hold workshop courses teaching our repair techniques and have repair technicians from all over the world coming to learn from us and earn their certification for installing the Straubinger Pad. The pad is now used by most of the companies making higher end flutes and piccolos, and for repairs in shops around the world.

I have been fortunate to be able to travel extensively throughout my career, attending flute conventions, visiting repair shops, colleagues, and customers around the world. For many years, my companion Dale has joined me in travel as well as work. She has managed the day-to-day communication and financial tasks necessary to keep the business moving.

Over the years I've been honored to receive two Lifetime Achievement Awards, first from the Chicago Flute Club in 2015, and more recently from the National Flute Association in 2024. It's been a great honor to be recognized for my work, and I value my membership in a community made up of so many fine musicians and craftspeople.