I like the sound from Generations tin whistle. Unfortunately, a lot of people pointed out the quality issue. Any other tin whistle has similar type of sound as Generations?
Generations aren’t all THAT bad, you just have to know what you’re looking for. Many of the best whistles I’ve ever heard are Generations.
However, if you’re looking for similar whistles, I’d first suggest Oak, and then probably Walton’s. Feadog’s can be nice, but in my own experience, they’ve had MUCH worse quality control problems recently.
There is a pre-tweaked whistle available at http://www.shannaquay.com that is one of the very sweetest I’ve ever heard! This whistle takes pretty accurate breath control, but it is SOOOOOOOO worth it when you master it (not hard at all really)
Bri~
I once avoided Generations despite their beautiful sound because of their bad quality control reputation. Mind you, this bad impresssion was formed even before I had even seen a Generation in the flesh.
Thankfully, on the week of St Pat’s, an Irish band came to the country with a 2 whole boxes of Generations for sale (as a Irish culture promotion thing). I tried about 20 and they were all playable. In the end I picked 3, and presently, I play Generations almost all the time (even though I’ve a Burke and a Sindt). Generations are great.
So the moral of the story is: try them before you condemn them. Since you like the sound of Generations, theres no reason why you shouldn’t try them out. After all, they are like, 5 bucks?
One thing you can do to reduce the chance of quality control problems is to try them out before you buy them if the store allows, or if you are ordering online, ask the retailer to test the whistle out for playability before shipping it to you. I think Song of the Sea and The Whistle Shop would gladly do this.
[ This Message was edited by: Eldarion on 2001-12-12 23:40 ]
I’ll have to agree with Brian about Feadogs having much worse quality control problems than Generations… I have yet to lay my hands on a Feadog that was even playable.
The nickel Generations I’ve dealt with have generally been better “out-of-the-box” than the brass ones, but I’ve yet to get hold of one that didn’t require some tweaking.
The Generation “folk whistle” has been spoken favorably of by several members of this forum, and mine also required very little tweaking to correct it’s minor manufacturing flaws.
Sure you’ll kill a few in the process of learning to tweak… and there are those Generations that can’t be helped with any amount of tweaking… but the end result is well worth the effort.
A good Generation really is hard to beat.
Well, I’ve hated my Feadogs for a long time, until the other day when StevieJ posted a post. He said, (loosely quoting) “Pull the head on your Generation out about 1/8 to bring it into internal tune. This will make it sound better, too.” It made all the difference for my Feadog, too.
Next time you have a disaster whistle, give it a shot and see if it works.
Erik
[ This Message was edited by: ErikT on 2001-12-13 02:58 ]
I think that Acorn (with the new fipple) and Clare are similar in sound to Generations.
~ Thornton
If you want a guaranteed good one, get the pre-tweaked one from Shannaquay.com. I tried 20 regular Generations in a shop in Ireland, and 2 were playable. That was, of course, as sold, without having applied StevieJ’s little trick.
Jessie
Cillian O’Brian’s tweaked Generation/Feadog is superb. About $20 I think.
Chris
I love my feadog’s. They take a bit of getting used to as far as breath control but once you have it down they are fantastic.
My feadog is still the whistle that I play the most, and I really love it. However, I did get it several years ago. Maybe they changed something in the manufacturing, or was I just lucky to get a nice one?
Here’s another vote for the Cillian O’Briain’s “improved” whistle from Shannaquay.com. It’s a great whistle, a reasonable price, and excellent service.
I’ll second the Oak as a back up for Generations. Oaks are a little trickier to play than Generations, but their quality seems to be consistant. I’ve had three, and played a couple of others that were all very similar.
-Brett
I like a Feadog barrel with a Walton’s mouthpiece.
Joe