6 keyed whistle

I used the head from the A Susato I won from Beth on a keyed piccolo body and this is what it looks like.

And have you played it? How does it sound? Looks good, at any rate.

JessieK posted something like that awhile back. I think the title was, “Whiccolo or Pistle?”

Best wishes,
Jerry

I believe JessieD’s was a boehm piccolo body, this one is some old German granola wood eBay find.

Yes, Nano, I’ve played it. Unfortunately, I did 2 of the pads myself so it’s leaky, and my fingers are kind of clumsy with all those keys. I think it’s out of tune, but I’m not sure because it squawks alot.

Cran, it’s easy to re-seat the pads if you installed them with the proper stuff. Just gently warm the metal behind the pad with an alcohol lamp, and when it loosens, let it seat on the instrument, then add just a tiny bit of pressure to align it.
Cheers, :smiley:
serp

Cool! Yeah, the tuning usually gets weird when you combine instruments.

Wonky tuning might be due to the distance of the ramp’s blade from the uppermost tonehole, I’m thinking. I think that a piccolo’s embouchure hole would be closer (referring to mental images of standard simple-system flutes). Don’t know the ratios, but maybe the Fute-O-Mat thingy, which I haven’t checked out, would be of some help here.

And I wager that the tweaks will continue. :wink:

Mabey sometime down the road I’ll (try to) make a PVC whistle head that fits it properly, but for now it’ll just have to be squawky and out of tune. :stuck_out_tongue:

The Susato still plays fine with the Sustato head. Go figure. :slight_smile:

I have an old 4-key piccolo in D, I suspect German-made, which came as a set with its flageolet (= whistle) head. Though the B-flat key is unconvenient in vertical position (it’s for a fifer’s thumb position), the materials used, and resp. conditions seem to indicate it was made as a set from the start, and by the same unknown maker.

The flute hole center is at the same distance to the body than the whistle blade edge.

I acctually found a real 6-keyed whistle at the local music store. I think at least it was the real thing cause the head looked very original. The body looks almost exactly the same as cranberrys but it has a head of the same type of wood, and a flute-style tuningslide. Because wood darkens with age and the head and body has the same colour I belive that they are of the same age, wich is very old. I think it’s made of cocus and it play’s nice, in tune with itself. I haven’t checked it on a tuner tough, and furthermore it still belongs to the store. It’s not really for sale, but the owner of the store said that he would think about selling it. If I get it, I’ll try to post a few pic’s of it later.

Cheers

Cranberry,

You need a headjoint that matches the diameter of the bore near the point where it couples.

I’m building a prototype of a 5-key chromatic high-d, three key-mounts finished - two to go.

A few months ago, I had this cheap Piccolo from Pakistan or India via Ebay and I decided to make whistle mouthpiece for it.

Well it’s done, it turned out well. In fact it functions as a high-D. I corrected a few tuning problems.
In fact, it functions better as whistle than it did as a piccolo. I did change the the threaded tenon to cork also to improve on it. Strange, it was horrible as flute but it turned out to be a good whistle.

It required an additional piece of telescoping tubing placed inside the headjoint to get the octaves to line up properly. The tuning was really strange until I did that.

So it was $30 + nearly $15 for shipping. A few dollars worth of brass and delrin and I now have a Chromatic High-D whistle.

I haven’t finished the one I’m building from scratch yet. Too many things going on.

The body looks similar to the one Cranberry was working on.

Does anyone want measurements for the mouthpiece?