Yesterday, I was sitting with my whistles, just looking at them, when I suddenly started to think: “Hey, what would a Sweetone fipple sound like on a Generation?”. I tried to put my Sweetone C fipple on my Generation D but found that it was to wide. (Actually, I had that figured out before I tried.) So I took a wine cork and drilled a hole through and then papered it down so the fipple would get on nice and tight. What I ended up with was a whistle that had lost most of the Sweetone breathiness but which had a less clear tune than the Generation. Also, the second octave was very clear, but a little out of tune with itself. Unfortunately, the bottom notes were very weak and the tone quality not to my liking. I then proceeded to my Generation Bb. Here the fipple was just a little to wide, so I sealed it tight with some soft paper. The result was once again a whistle with a VERY good and clean second octave but with a very weak and unpleasant lower octave.
On the whole, the experiment didn’t turn out so well, but perhaps there are some of you out there that has better experiences and want to share. Perhaps one could try with different Sweetone fipples and see if one of the other would give a better sound in the lower octave.
I stuck a SweeTone C fipple on a Generation Bb tube and it fit perfectly.
Of course I had to slide the tube in past the part of the fipple that was intended to fit the SweeTone body, but that was necessary to achieve proper tuning anyway.
The result wasn’t anything spectacular, but it played and sounded better than the original Generation Bb did.
Tuaz did the same thing, and even posted some recordings of the hybrid whistle to Clips & Snips.
[ This Message was edited by: raindog1970 on 2002-02-22 11:05 ]
I posted this question before and no one answered. (Keeping trade secrets, maybe?) I’ve interchanged feadog and Generation fipples and tubes and found interesting combinations of sound. Now…
Some people have raved about how great Generation C whistles are. (I don’t have one.) Has a Gen C owner put it’s fipple on a D tube? Did it fit? Did it sound great? Is this the solution to the crappy Gen D fipple problem?
Tony
I once put a generation C fipple on a generation D body (with paper wrapping to make it fit.) It sounded great, much better than the d fipple did, but it put the upper octave out of tune. I never did find a way to fix it.
On 2002-02-23 19:22, nickb wrote:
I once put a generation C fipple on a generation D body (with paper wrapping to make it fit.) It sounded great, much better than the d fipple did, but it put the upper octave out of tune. I never did find a way to fix it.
This could be a business opportunity for an enterprising fanatic. Make the C fipple work on the D tube and be in tune. I’d buy one. Cillian O’Briain takes Generation fipples, grinds down the blade, and fits a new blade to it (like a crown on a tooth), drills out tubes so they’re in tune and sells them for about $30. Think about it.
Tony
Edit: His whistles are incredibly sensitive to breath pressure, so much so, that they’re pretty difficult to play. So, working with an unaltered C fipple would not be redundant.