I guess this means I’d have trouble with clarinets and oboes–I don’t recall ever holding one. Apparently the EWI’s are well within traditional spec, ergonomically speaking. Holding a flute transversally, the right thumb and crook of your left hand support it very stably from normally supportive angles, but the EWI puts all the weight on the side of your thumb, which I found too uncomfortable over time and klutzy. The Aerophone at 2 lbs. (855 grams), I simply can’t do, but its size and speaker position allow resting it on my lap or the chair in the space between my legs without neck strain or speaker muffling. Plus, you have to wiggle the thumbs to actuate stuff on tthe EWI and Sylphyo, which is far easier on the lighter weight Sylphyo, but lots of people swear by the EWI’s rollers, which I at least found workable. Right thumb and crook of left hand don’t move on a flute, by the way. But I also had real problems with a transverse flute digging in (hand/finger numbness) so that I had to use a flute bo peep. At one point, I consulted with a flute headjoint maker about an extremely curved headjoint that would enable vertical play, but I never went for that.
ADDED:
I see that my EWI-5000 was even heavier, at 1.98 lbs. (0.9 kg). I wouldn’t mind holding one of these new EWI’s in my hands–as I said, I love an onboard speaker, and the much more affordable price might make me do something stupid.
Oh yeah, it’s worth mentioning Yamaha’s WX-5 at this point, whose feel I liked much better than the EWI, and sounded far better than than the EWI series using Yamaha’s VL-m (with must-have Patchman turbo chip), on a par with the Aerophone’s sound. The WX-5 weighs 1.2 lbs. (520g), and as I recall the weight is more evenly distributed on two thumbs. Apparently, I have a weight threshold between 1.2 and 1.7 lbs. The obsolete WX-5 setup, like Sylphyo/SWAM, was also $2000.