I have a Generation Bb whistle and thought I would be able to adjust the the mouth piece. Is there an easy way to break the seal or be able to make the mouth piece adjustable on these? I have heard others say they were able to do that but was not sure if they just heated it in hot water or some other way. I also wanted to use some type of wax to fill the mouth piece open spaces to help tweak the instrument. Anyone have any good ideas as to the amount to place in the mouthpiece to tweak it?
Thanks,
scottie
http://www.chiffandfipple.com/tweak.html seems to cover the basics - and then a lot more.
(hey, there is a still whole web site there - I had forgotten about that !)
Thanks so much david_h for the info. That is exactly what I need to know.
scottie
I love to tinker so I bought 4 gen Bb whistles and went at it using the tweaking info on C&F. For starters one of the whistles sounded really good untouched, the second was ok, the third a little too raspy for me and the 4th fagetaboutit! So I did the various tweaks and I can’t say I noticed any positive change to these 4 whistles. What I did notice was that the best one changed with filling in the cavity. The sound went from a kind of hollow mid-range with a little more highs to a more mid-range fatness, like going from a strat to a Les Paul. I took the wax back out. I prefer it without the wax. There was no stray plastic in any of the fipples and the finish of all of them looked pretty smooth. It was easy to get the fipples off by just holding them under a running hot water faucet. While monkeying around I blew through the fipples without a tube and at low pressure before they would whistle, the better ones were smoother and had less shrill than the worst one. So for $40 I wound up with 2 I can enjoy and two extra tubes. I compared the 2 good ones with a Jerry tweaked and a Tony D. tweaked, and I found the 2 tweaked whistles to be very similiar to each other both in sound and design. They sounded fatter and a bit easier to play with a bit less volume in the lower octave, and maybe a bit smoother in the upper octave. The 2 good ones I bought untweaked have a stronger bell note in the lower octave, are a little hollower sounding and are less tolerant of mistakes, maybe a bit more chiffy. I perfer the untweaked ones outdoors where I can lean into the stronger lower octave. They all have a little raspiness to them. I’d love to get my hands one one without the raspiness but with all the other good qualities. Amazing the trouble you can get into with too much time on your hands ! — Retired.
OOPS - spoke too soon. The whistles without the cavity filled were just too difficult to control after awhile so I filled the cavaties and now they’re more stable. As far as I can see now the only difference between my Gens and Jerry & Tommy’s is they have added material to the lip to lower and extend it. That would make the window shorter and weaken the lower octave, while putting the lip in a better position if it were off to begin with. So I’m wondering about those occasionally found real good old Gens, they wouldn’t have the cavity filled, what is it about their construction that makes them unique ?
I tried the tweaking by making sure no burrs were anywhere on the plastic mouthpiece fipple area etc. Since the whistle still did not sound good at all - too much squeaking and some other funny sounds I decided to buy some mounting putty like Jerry suggested in his articles and post. Since this whistle must have been made in the 1980s it was very difficult to get the fipple off. I had to use near boiling water two or three times before I could get it to budge. It was not glued on but just fit extremely tight. I put some putty into the void space and tested it but found I could not get any sound. I overfilled the void. I remove some to leave just enough at the fipple back edge and it sounded good with the mouth piece slightly on the tube. I then put the tube in the freezer for a few minutes to cool down and shrink to make it easier to get the mouthpiece on. I then put a thin coat of vegetable oil on the cold tube and was able to get the fipple in place. After testing it I moved it a little to tune it and have to say this is a nice sounding Bb whistle for as little as I paid for it. Thanks to all for all the helpful information.
Frank