I was watching L.E. McCollough’s tin whistle video tutorial yesterday and it had a great close up of his old Generation nickle D whistle. The head is obviously different in design than the new ones. Mostly what I noticed is that the bulb on the fipple blade is much smaller than the new ones and doesn’t extend as far toward the blade, and the head around where it meets the fipple blade seems a bit different too. It looked a whole lot more like the head of my Oak D whistle which, I found, sounds alot more like L.E.'s Generation than any of my actual Generations.
Does anyone know-- when did Generation change their design? Why did they change their design? Is it even possible to get a "good’ new one that sounds like the older ones or should I just give up?
They also have a ridge (or line) on the top of the windway like a slightly pitched roof. You can feel it on your top lip when you play. I would make the very wild guess that that is one reason they changed the design.
As to when it changed, I bought one about 1979 and it is the new design, but my wife got one as a gift a few years before (and then dropped it, so the tip shattered) and it was the old style. So another wild guess would be about 1970ish.
Mr. McCullough’s old blue whistle earned the following obituary when it died: http://www.chiffandfipple.com/cf2-10-02/cf.html
bye
bj
I’m pretty sure it was a good deal later than that. I still have some ridge-style Cs and Bbs that I bought in about 1980 at a store where they would have been selling quite a few and so unlikely to have old stock. Another “feature” of this design was a flat spot in the curve on the back of head.
The design has changed more than once since the ridge was abolished, I think. In the latest batch the colour of the blue plastic has become much lighter, and the red much deeper.
As for getting a good one goes, the situation is not hopeless. I find that most of the current batch Ds and Ebs are OK. Almost all the Ds sound a tad raspy when you try them in the shop but this is largely due to the head been rammed down onto the shaft too far.
Correct this by ungluing and repositioning the head and the chances are the whistle will be quite OK. If you’re not totally satisfied, try one of the many tweaks discussed at great length in the board and you can make yourself a magic little whistle. My current favourite tweak, which is really not difficult, is to narrow the windway.
My brass generation Bb has the same shaped head as L.E.'s D, and it has the ridge down the middle of the mouthpiece, and this Generation sounds GREAT!!! The weird thing is that I bought it in 2000. It does look a little old, so maybe it was floating around the music shop for a while?
My first whistle was a Generation D, nickle plated. I got it some time in the early 1990s and from what is being described, it has the old style mouthpiece. I suspect there are probably still a lot of them out there, since Generation makes so many. Actually, all my Generations were purchased in the 1990s, and all of them, with the exception of one, have the old style mouth piece.
About a month ago, I picked up a tabor pipe from a little shop in Anchorage, AK. It is a blue-head, nickel Generation Tabor pipe. And it seems to have the old style head. I was surprised to see the funny ridge and actually guessed I was holding a newly-redesigned Generation head… I suppose the shop doesn’t do a brisk trade in tabor pipes.
