buzzy oak

Whistle
1

Well yeah I haven’t been here for a long time, mostly because I haven’t been playing whistle very much. We have a 200-disc CD changer and one day it decided to start spitting CD’s out of the rack while spinning and it broke the CD I was learning from clean in half. So I guess I didn’t really get motivation to teach myself until recently.

Anyways, I have a Sweetone and an Oak, and my Oak is kinda buzzy on the lower half of the upper register. The Sweetone isn’t like this but it’s pretty breathy and kind of cheap-sounding if that makes any sense. And after adjusting to the Oak, I found that the “ease of play” of the Sweetone really just means it wants to auto-jump to the next note, making it harder to have more subtle and smooth fingerings.

My Oak also seems to like squeaking when flipping to the lower register, it takes a good amount of concentration to make sure it doesn’t. Any ideas on how to fix this? I took a good look at the fipple and there might be a tiny dent in the blade, but I can’t really tell for sure since it’s a black fipple. I’ve been thinking about just getting a set of Gens, I prefer the sound of B flats anyway.

2

I found that the squeaking is lessened through lots of practice. It seems like you should be able to figure out the one thing to do with your fingers to make it go away, but it must be a cosmic dues-paying thing.


Did you say you tried the tweaking techniques described on the main website? They seem to work for the Oak.

3

I don’t have the materials for sanding the blade or anything, but I used the cap of a pen to stuff some sticky-tack down in the fipple. It took some fine tuning in shaping the tack, but it got rid of the buzzing and squeaking, strengthened the lower oactive and balanced the air requirement and volume levels between both octaves–it’s like a new whistle! I also took the blunt side of the cap and rubbed it against the blade. I don’t know if that did anything or not, the sound seemed to be mostly affected by the tack.

I also used some on my sweetone. It was more difficult to fine tune, but now it pretty much sounds the same as before except the breathy sound seems less cheap and more solid. It’s hard to describe, but it’s a good thing. Yay for sticky-tack! It’s really not overrated as the whistlers best friend!

4

It’s remarkable what a little sticky tack will do for a cheap whistle. I’m also an Oak lover myself BTW - best cheap whistle I’ve ever played.

Eric

5

dan…you are now a professional tweaker of the Oak…your certificate is in the mail. :slight_smile: I have been tweaking on Oaks more almost two years. The hardest thing is on some the mouth piece just doesn’t want to give from the body…you probably saw my post asking for advice. The newer Oak seem to be worse regarding this problem. Just putting the puddy in will control 98% of the problem…the other 2% you have control over as a player…