Around the year 2012, Wibb's focus appears to move from retuning old flutes to supporting the emerging cohort of new artisan flutemakers (predominantly in the US by this time), who had been following closely the work firstly of Albert Cooper, and later the work of the team of Bennett-Spell-Wye to produce a definitive scale, called, indeed, "The Scale". One might think the task had been completed, and that the "last word" on flute tuning had been written. Wibb, needless to say, clearly carried on, right up to his death in 2022; Eldred Spell also died at the end of that year.
That work was devoted to supporting new flutemakers by freely providing them with the best scale data he could recommend, and, when they sent him flutes to test, providing detailed analysis and feedback. This must have been something of a mixed blessing for them. One the one hand, they had a highly authoritative scale specification for free, while on the other it seemed impossible to send a flute for trial and receive a simple "OK". Any flutemaker needs at some point to lock the scale down, so to speak, but possibly Wibb himself never quite reached that stage.
A few of these makers are represented in this archive by either a detailed measurement or a scale specification. They are listed below in alphabetical order, except for the first one.
Landell (Jonathon). See his website for his own account of his adoption, to begin with, of the Cooper scale. Wibb, we learn, bought the first one, and as it happened I got to see it and try it out when newly graduated from the RCM. I have no memories of any conclusions, and there is but one small but interesting paper in the archive devoted to a Landell flute, sadly undated.
This is how Wibb so often worked - inviting whichever flute player to try a flute, and maybe asking "is F a little low?". In short – putting said flute player on the spot. At least, that is what I felt at the time! The very last time I visited Wibb, shortly before Covid prevented any such visits, it was a more familiar exercise (having had a few years of practice), for the latest new arrival.
Almeida (Edward). Almeida died long before his time, and sadly there is no website to which to link. He was an early adopter of Wibb's scale as it was at the time. There are a couple of papers in the archive (plus a "Wibb's copy" of the other), outlining the OH/CH scales for A442/3. The "copy" is interesting for Wibb's annotation of the upper LH notes being "a little flat" - something of an ongoing question ever since the original form of the Cooper scale.
Altus. Wibb worked closely with Shuichi Tanaka of Altus over many years, and as noted elsewhere the whole of Wibb's large archive of papers was passed on to Mr Tanaka after Wibb's death. The archive contains a significant quantity of notes detailing not only scales (as proposed to Altus, but also to other makers) but also measurements of specific flutes old and new, and various comparisons. Some notes are historical in nature, e.g. as described in the section Old Flutes. It is my hope that in time more of this archive material will be put into the public domain, representing as it does primary evidence of a period of the greatest historical significance for all flute players and makers.
Arista (Miguel). There are two significant scale papers in the collection, separated by some 13 years, arguably encapsulating the changes that developed over that period, while the later paper still predates the (final?) form of the Wye-Bennett-Spell scale documented for 2011/12. The first paper (1984) is clearly on behalf of a commission from another player and is written very clearly, neatly tabulated - just as one might expect a formal specification to be presented. The second (1997), "using larger RH tone holes", lists scales for both A440 and 442, and is very much a hand-written note, complete with corrections and crossings out.
The annotations added to the copy of the 1984 paper are interesting in other ways. We see the note "Also given to Yamaha 1982" and "Also given to Almeida for Bas Bell". This was the eminent and much missed English player Sebastian Bell ("Bas" to all who knew him), a founding member of the London Sinfonietta. A close Wibb contemporary, and colleague of his at the Royal Academy of Music, Bell shared Wibb's love of old French flutes, tuned several Louis Lots, and also made a number of silver headjoints.
Moore (Jack). Another pioneering American flute maker, Moore figures in the archive primarily for early collaboration (ca. 1978) on adjustments to the original Cooper Scale. One paper in the archive is remarkable for being a rare example of a historical overview, carefully dated 2011: "Comparing the 1978 JM scale and the 78 scale of Cooper for Almeida". Beyond this, the initials "JM" appear in a number of papers, including one titled "General Drift" (working out some "Ideal ideas, OH scale"), with a few other makers referenced similarly.