Chiff and Fipple Forums

The finger holes have very sharp edges on them. Not rough, just very square. I guess this feature makes them snappy, but it also stamps sharp little circles into my fingers! I wonder if it would be any detriment to the instrument if I were to round off the edges of those tone holes a little bit? It...

Well, I'd be happy to evaluate! I can even post videos about it if you like. It likely won't be soon though: bear in mind that I've only just started making prototype whistle heads, so there's a lot of work to do there yet. These heads are going to be attached to quenas and quenillas using magnets ...

Thanks Paddler for doing all that work to help. I notice the writing at the bottom says something along the lines of "test-experiment factory wind and percussion musical instruments", which ties in with it being a relatively recent development of the instrument. That issue of it causing di...

But I suppose the rationale for your proposed design is that if we're departing a bit from the sopilka, we might as well depart from it a bit more than Morneaux does and use the left-hand thumb hole for B flat instead of C natural. Makes sense to me. Well, we both seem happy with that plan, so that...

Let me first say that I'm thankful to have this discussion with you. I love the F natural and D sharp holes on my Morneaux chromatic, but I admit that I'm undecided on the best ways to tackle G sharp and B flat, and I've always wanted to discuss the various options for handling these notes with som...

It's more complicated than I've explained so far, because I actually have had two versions of the Morneaux chromatic whistle. I initially bought a Mark 1, and then I sent it back to him years later to modify it because I had a new design idea in mind (the guy is brilliant and willing to try custom ...

I'll stop responding when people stop bringing up new points. I appreciate you sharing your enthusiasm for the 10 hole whistle here as it indicates that there could be a market for something of that kind of high quality at a more affordable price, and the cost of adding a few extra holes is indeed ...

This has been a useful discussion though. I had been thinking a out experimenting with making a chromatic quena but couldn't decide how to go about it as there are lots of potential ways of doing things. (Incidentally, I'd like to do it with a piano too by having extra black keys so that you can pla...

There is another factor. When you compare the sound of the bell note with no holes cut and then the same note with all the holes cut and covered by fingers, the quality of the tone is noticeably degraded. Every additional hole damages it a little more. I'm not going to cut extra holes in any of my i...

There's no need to use a thicker wall just to get extra thickity around a hole or double hole - you could design an additional part to glue on, making it from delrin, resin or even wood. But why not make and sell whistles without holes so that the buyer can drill them where they want them? Give them...

I was interested to see the curved edge on the bottom of the ramp. I would have thought that not a good idea - that we would want the transit time across the window to be uniform across the window. But am I ignoring something or blowing it out of appropriate proportion? When I experimented with mak...

I wonder if you have tried making an instrument from the combination of wood and epoxy resin I see in fancy knife handles etc. I can see some creative possibilities there and if we're making instruments from Delrin then why not epoxy? Why not, indeed. I learned from Geoffrey to coat the bore of my ...

In that case, I'll try 22mm as well (which can also be built on a standard size pipe) and focus on getting both 20mm and 22mm up to the best quality I can, then I'll be able to explore sizes in between later and try to evolve them towards an ideal. Thanks Paddler and Tunborough for the helpful infor...

I think I should go even narrower than the diagram suggests. It has the optimum place for a D whistle on 23mm, so to find for a D the equivalent of sub 19mm on an F whistle I'd have to aim for 21 to 21.5mm, and yet the modern orchestral flute appears to be only 19mm, and surely a low D whistle ought...

The material used to make a whistle or flute isn't supposed to affect the sound produced by it, so I wouldn't limit the search to brass. What counts is the geometry, while the main impact of wall thickness is on how much the skin on your fingers bulges through into the tube, which means that bigger ...