Bad Whistle?

[Faelan]

Hello all,

I am relatively new to whistling (been playing since Christmas) so it's very possible this could just be me - but here's my problem.

I purchased a Guinness Whistle (Waltons Little Black??) and the low D note is extremely fluttery and metallic sounding. I did the sticky-tack tweak, and cleaned off all the burrs on the plastic from the molds but it still sounds the same.

All the other notes sound ok but B and A both are weak and low in volume.

My other whistles sound just fine to me.

Any ideas?

[peeplj]

Yep, I had one like that.

I finally cut away the original blade and built a new one using superglue.

Wound up with a very nice sounding whistle, but be warned that this tweak took several hours of pretty intensive work both by myself and from my wife, and even after all of that there's no guarantee it would work for you as well as it did for me.

Here's how mine sounds now:

http://flutesite.com/samples/ashplant_guinness.mp3

--James

[Bloomfield]

http://flutesite.com/samples/ashplant_guinness.mp3

--James

Nice!

[peeplj]

Thanks, Bloomfield!

--James

[Adrian]

Faelan

Send it to Tommy! It's a nice whistle and he will make it play perfectly.

[MTGuru]

Here's a tweak you can try which is easy and less invasive than rebuilding the fipple.

Take a piece of your blue tack putty and roll it into a little ball 6 or 7 millimeters in diameter (around 1/4 inch). Place it into the open end of the whistle tube, pressed gently against the bottom wall of the tube, a few millimeters in from the open end. Now play the whistle and check if the bottom D and other troublesome notes have improved.

In my (limited) experience, the tubes of some whistles, like the Guinness black, may be a hair too short. The putty ball acts as a "choke", increasing the effective acoustical length of the tube, and shifting the standing waves to a better position.

If you're still not satisfied, experiment! If the low D is too flat, try squashing the putty ball slightly against the tube - I use a round wooden chopstick for that. If the D is still too weak, try pushing the ball further into the tube. Or start again with a bigger or smaller putty ball. Whatever you do is completely reversible. I've been able to rescue a few problem whistles and even recorders using this simple trick.

Good luck!

[Whitmores75087]

MT, doesn't your tweak flatten the D? I used a tweak like this when the D is too sharp.

[MTGuru]

MT, doesn't your tweak flatten the D?

Yes, it does. But if a short tube is the cause of Faelan's problem, then you actually want to flatten the D. You can control the amount of flattening by the shape, size and position of the choke. Sometimes just a little bit is all that's needed to restore a decent bell tone D that can easily be blown back into pitch when playing.

If it doesn't work, you can remove the blue tack and use it to stick the whistle to the wall as a nice room decoration.

[Faelan]

I think I'll try that choke idea, thanks! =D