In our ongoing work here at the Global Pennywhistle Tweaking and Production Consortium headquarters, we have need of examples of pre-1980’s Generation whistleheads.
In particular, I’m looking for broken or otherwise unplayable old Generation whistleheads you would be willing to donate so I can investigate them in detail to try to understand as thoroughly as possible what made these whistles so wonderful. (If you have intact old whistleheads you would be willing to donate, of course I’ll gladly accept them, too.)
You can distinguish a pre-1980’s Generation whistlehead because it has a subtle ridge running the length of the beak, on top and underneath. I’m hoping to find examples of all the keys that were made.
Please be assured, if all goes well with this research, whistlers everywhere will benefit.
As always, thanks so much for your kind help. Y’all are a treasure.
I have a Generation Bb (brass, red top) bought in the early nineties which has the ridges (and a rough-cut spot on the underside where it seems to have been cut off from whatever it was attached to during the molding process). However, I really, really love it. If this is what you are looking for, will your investigation destroy or alter it in any way? If it won’t, and if I can have the head back after you’re done with it, and if you can’t find any other Bb head to look at, I’d be willing to part with it for a while. It is untweaked and I’d prefer it to stay that way.
IIRC, this was my first whistle, too. Ah, memories…
Hold onto it for now. Let’s see if we can come up with unplayable ones, that can be sacrificed, first.
There will probably come a time in this project when I would like to inspect good working examples of these whistles, as well. There’s nothing like playing and hearing what it’s all about. The whistle you’ve described is, in fact a pre-1980’s (or early '80’s; they changed sometime in the early '80’s) whistle.
I will give you an old C head I have, and my old soprano F, if I can find it.. I don’t really know how old it is, though. I’ll mail it (them) out Monday.
The most striking difference between the two heads is the “bump” on the blade, which starts about 1.5 mm further down the blade on the old head, and is an almost perfect half circle instead of the cone-like shape on the new head.
It also looks as if the old head was worked on by a human with a knife, the ridge on the underside is smoothed a bit, and there are toolmarks left. Maybe that’s why they redesigned their molds, to lay off some people and save money?
It’s exactly like the one described by Sonja, except I used it for a little experiment, hence a couple non-standard holes
Would you rather have as well its original brass, varnished and tarnished, tube?
I suspect it’s the special “Generation British Made D” transfer label which made its special sound
Well, Jerry, I’m not sure if it’s an old model but I do have a broken “C” head you can have. Of course, you’ll need a little Bondo™ to fill in the missing pieces…
