Recently I bought an Abell whistle which turned out to be not in blackwood but in mopane (i bought it from a guy who brought it from US). I didn’t know before Abells might be in different wood other than blackwood so I was surprised.
It is a great whistle, needless to say, with pure wooden tone, great tuning and loudness.
But, as I always thought of Abells as of whistles in blackwood I was curious what they sounded like and if there was any difference between blackwood and mopane whistles.
Just about the same time, another ITM musician here bought a D-C Abell set in blackwood. We had session on weekend so I had great chance to compare the two different Abells.
At first tries and glance there seems no difference - the Abells are pretty uniform in all - you can easily take the head form black one and join it to the brown body and vice versa. There’s no evident difference in craftsmanship and dimensions.
But yet - there is some difference. (It is of course pretty much subjective and, moreover, this difference is so slight that, I suspect, many players would not even notice it).
Blackwood one seems a wee bit heavier.
The blackwood itself seems less resonant, it is possibly denser - it stays idle, so to speak, when you play the whistle and doesn’t participate much in tone colouring. Due to that the sound is sort of more “closed” as it stays inside and has the “obstacle” of less resonant blackwood tube.
The blackwood whistle seemed to have a bit more backpressure - I dunno why.
The tone of it is sweeter.
Also it seemed to me a bit quieter.
And my mopane one is the oppossite to the above listed:
it has more open, brighter, a bit louder tone with a lot of harmoncs due to resonant mopane wood tube.
I didn’t decide what whistle I liked better - I like the brightness and openness of the mopane one, but I like a bit more backpressure the blackwood one has.
So, they both are great with no doubt.
It is very pleasant and handy to play these whistles.
This type of question usually brings up quite a lot of argument, or let’s call it friendly banter, on the subject of materials.
Most of the senior makers seem to agree with me that material alone has little effect on whistle tone/sound. Design of the whistle itself is far more important. I didn’t believe this at first, but after acquiring quite a collection of instruments in the same key, and of the same model, I am convinced that this is indeed a fact. Even from the most skilled makers, there will be differences in whistle playing characteristics, particularly sound. That’s why virtually all of the good whistle makers will tweak their whistles to suit your particular taste.
It is also very true and not often discussed but whistle-makers evolve their designs over time so that a whistle made today may be very different than one made five or ten years ago from the same crafter.
In any case, it’s difficult to say that mopane sounds better or worse or even compares to blackwood. The design, and the likelihood that anyone who can afford an Abell will likely spend some time personalizing it, kind of makes the question itself challenging to answer.
I’d be really happy to have either of them though…
It is really the voicing in the head joint (Carey Parks and I had a bit of a long conversation on this very topic the other day) that makes the tonal differences for the most part and not the materials. There are other elements as well that play into the playability, like I generally find that narrow bore whistles seem more responsive, etc. I have Abells both in delrin and blackwood and yes they are different and I like them both but I believe the differences are in the voicing (the delrin happens to be a bit clearer or less chiffy). As Carey was noting he remains a bit mystified at how the most negligible of differences in finishing the labium ramp can affect the tone in a great way with all other factors being held equal.
I’d be surprised - but then I often am - if mopane and blackwood were much different in terms of tone production. I have a mopane recorder from Phil Bleazey and it has a very similar structure to blackwood - i.e., very dense and compact, with little open grain. And I believe they have similar specific weights, both around 1.2.
There’s the real test. Did you, in fact, do just that? Did you swap the headjoints? How’d they sound then?
And I would agree with Ecohawk that makers may change their preferred voicing over time. My personal experience with Abell whistles bears that out. Do you know what the serial numbers on each whistle are?
I totally agree with Philo. I have the same experience all the time. I’ll make two whistles from the same plank of wood and yet they’ll end up with quite different personalities and tones. No matter how exact and consistent we try to be, with hand work little differences will show up. It can be joyously serendipitous, or frustratingly difficult to manage.
Well, guys…
I absolutely agree that it is design of the fipple that makes significant difference in the tone of a whistle
but I would never believe that the material from which a whistle is made does not influence its sound.
Today we had session again and I made sure that there is difference between Abell D in blackwood and Abell D in mopane.
I am not saying it is great - it stays within Abell whistles typical tone - possibly many would not hear it at all as it is the matter of sensibility; possibly listeners from outside would not hear this difference and it makes sense mostly for players.
I didn’t swap the heads - the first time I just didn’t have this idea, today we had loud full blast session and there was just no time and quietness for experiments.
Our Abells are #1737 and #1745. I don’t think any of them was made with custom changes - they seem to be regular whistles.
You do need to swap the heads for a clinical test, because as noted there may be differences between the mopane and blackwood Abells, but especially with hand crafted custom whistles like Abell, there are no “regular” whistles in that the slightest difference in the work on the voicing (which is a bit unique to each whistle) will cause surprising differences in tonal qualities.
