Over the past 18 months or so I’ve bought about twenty Generations: Ds and Cs. A couple of times they let me try them before hand, so my sample was presorted. Most I couldn’t try though.
I think the unrealiability of cheap whistes, especially Generations, is generally overstated. There was one truly awful Feadog I tried once, hardly played in the second octave. But apart from that, the cheapos I’ve bought have been playable.
And then there is good old-fashioned tweaking. I’ll admit that there are some Generations (or other cheapos) that aren’t quite the thing right out of the box, mostly they are bit shrill and edgy in the upper octave, but I have yet to find a whistle that didn’t respond well to tweaking.
Just this past weekend I gave to a friend and whistle afficionado my best tweaked Generation C (redtop brass). The head was loosened (that in itself is tricky on a Generation C). I glued a bit of guitar pick into the windway, increasing sweetness & focus of the tone and creating backpressure. I filled the cavity with blu-tak(I think… I don’t alway these days), I gently cleaned and blunted the blade, I cleaned up the exit of the windway. The result was a yummy Generation C. A sound that couldn’t be whistlier, without shrillness or edge, with a bit of breath, character and flexibility. Nothing between you and the music.
Says my friend and whistle afficionado: “What more could you wish for, I think, when I play it.”
I have noticed that my Gens don’t play any better than I do. As a matter of fact as I get better so do they. They are actually a very nice sounding whistle. I have added some yellow tack to some of mine but not all of them. I haven’t gone into the guitar pick bit yet although I am going to try it. I do clean up the windway of mold marks and loose junk. I am going to buy a few for experimental purposes and play around with some ideas I have. If I ruin a fipple I can just buy a whitecap and have a great whistle. One of the things I like about the inexpensive whistles is the ability to experiment without costing a fortune. If I owned a high end whistle I would be afraid to touch it.
I was able to try a few Generations at Lark in the Morning when I was in Seattle this past summer. None sounded terrible, and I picked one that was the best sounding of the lot. I like it pretty well, especially in the second octave, which isn’t shrill by the way.
I wish I could get a whistle with the Generation first octave sound and the Clarke upper octave sound. I think that would be my perfect whistle (if it would play in a breeze).
I have to say i agree with you bloomy,
I have recently purcheased 1 D, 2 Eb, 2 Bb (1 brass 1 nickel) 1 C, 1 G & 1 F, generation whistles
Yes whoa is alive and well at my place,
The D is as good as any whistle i own,
Eb’s are perfect
the Bb brass was very nice but the nickel needed attention, after inverting the shaft, up to the a point just below the head into boiling water for 20 seconds a little twist, job done, head removed, thankfully all that was needed after that was a little clean up and the head slid up the shaft a bit.
too easy and played heaps better
The c is sweet as is
the f&g need a little work doing on them, a future project,
but all in all i think generation are quite acceptable despite having one slightly sus nickel d in the past.
(hmm) might be a thing with nickel generations, either that or i was just unlucky
I seen a very interesting tweak from a friends whistle a soodlum d, this whistle was operated upon by a whistle tutor he had the priviledge to meet
basically it had the blu tack treatment, all edges cleaned up but the interesting part was bees wax melted and moulded over both corners / or left and right side of the fipple, the bees wax in effect narrowed the length of the fipple, the owner claims it sweetened the sound 100 %, and i wouldnt argue the sound was great,
Has anyone else tryed this??
Ahhh… Generation Eb’s. If I could have only one whistle for the rest of my days on a deserted island, it would be a Generation Eb.
One of the tracks on Flook’s “Flatfish” CD is “Eb Reels”. Colin Goldie told me on the telephone that was performed on two Generation Ebs. And, it’s one of the damnedest things you’ll ever hear.
the bees wax is shaped to the thickness of dried spagetti and laid over the top and underneath the wind cutting edge of the fipple,
the bees wax in relation to the sides of the head & the fipple is at the junction of the fipple to the side of the head wall on both sides
best i can do to explain, , thus shortening the length of the wind cutting fipple
hope this helps
David
Ohhhh yeah. My whistling obsession started with a Generation D that I picked up in Ireland a year ago. Bought it on a total whim. It only cost 5 euros. To everyone’s surprise (my own, most of all) I got hooked! I’ve never played anything you have to blow into before. I only wish I had started when I was 8, instead of 38. Oh well. Better late than never!
I’ve since acquired many more whistles, but always go back to the Gen. So far, I’ve stuck with the cheapies (Clark & Oak). One day, I might buy a Burke, but only when my level of playing is equal to the whistle. Then again, maybe I never will. I’ve had more than one good whistle player tell me that it doesn’t get any better than a Gen!
OK, I think I’ve got you. I was confused because what you call fipple, I think I’d call blade, and what you call length of the fipple [blade] I’d call the width of the blade.
I’ve tried a few treaks that reduce the width of the window and blade, but I haven’t been very successful. I’ll have to try wax.
I’ve been playing whistle for about 14 years, and I own only Generations. Which I know makes me an anomaly here… But I like 'em! I only have one D that I play, and I’ve had it for probably most of the time that I’ve been playing. I think I lost it and then found it a couple of years later… In fact, it’s so old that the mouthpiece is starting to disintegrate. Just the corners, currently - there are little flakes of plastic coming off, and I’m reluctant to poke it too much. But I have an Eb that’s also really nice, and I finally loosened all the heads (‘all’ = 4; Bb, C, D, and Eb) last spring, so I’ll probably just swap them when the D finally falls apart. I have 2 Bbs, and one is nasty, but the other is really nice - but unfortunately has cracks in the mouthpiece, which are sealed with wax, so it sounds lovely but looks pretty disgusting. It’s a problem. I’m lazy, so I’ve never bothered with tweaking - loosening the heads was purely for tuning purposes.
I think I’ll just stick with those.
Deirdre
I just accidently hit the backspace button and lost my whole post on Gens and tweeking and etc. Well, I like em, will probably continue to like em, and seems I liked em even before I ever played the whistle. I have one very nice D and, one that I wrecked, even the wrecked one has now been salvaged into a quiet practice whistle. I have a couple more D’s and Eb’s that have yet to be taken to the butcher shop. If this is a sickness, it’s a good kind of sickness. I used to be big on Sweetone D’s, but now they are starting to seem a little bland, maybe their charm will come back someday.
On the Gen D and Eb I’v found that opening up the windway on top helped quite a bit. This allowed more air to travel over the top of the blade, I think there was hardly any going over the top before I did this, making for a squeak prone, and honking (with all holes covered) whistle. They play much better after opening them up.
I plan on getting a Silkstone, probably won’t tweak on that one.
A new brass Generation whistle can be had for $4.95 at one vendor I know of, maybe for less elsewhere.
Well, I wonder if it does. I doubt whether there would be many here who play only Generations, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a high proportion play only cheap whistles. One piper in particular drops in from time to time to razz us about being big spending no-talents but there seem to me to be a lot of threads discussing cheapies and tweaks and so on.
Of course, a lot of people ask about the relative merits of expensive whistles, and those of us who own and play a wide cross-section of different brands tend to answer. But I get the impression that a relatively small number of us answer most of the time, thus giving the casual observer the false impression that we all own at least 40 or 50 whistles. Most people without experience of a wide range of whistles have the good sense not to make comparative judgments based on nothing.
I own about 190 whistles. That’s pretty typical, isn’t it? (They’re mostly cheapies. You know, about 60 Sweetones, 60 Generation and other Gen types, 30 Shaws, a few odd Susatos and Dixons, a couple of Synwhistles, etc. … about what I figure most C&F posters have.)
I own about 50, haven’t counted them, also mostly cheapies. I have one high-end, and that’s a Burke. The rest are Clarkes, Sweetones, Generations, a few Oaks and Feadogs in there, a Clare, and a Shaw A. And when the JerryGen is available in a few weeks, I will own a few more!
I love the cheapos, and will play almost nothing else at home or in intimate settings. When it comes to high-end whistles I am drawn to those most like the cheapos (Sindts) and those the least like them (Overtons).
Jerry and Wombat -
I didn’t mean it like that at all! In fact, I’m starting to feel inadequate (although I doubt that WhOA will set in anytime soon - that would kind of require some money… :roll: ). All those nice whistles… and me with a falling-apart Gen …
I’m off to mastermind my high-end-whistle-kleptomanic-episode…
Deirdre
A good Gen is a great thing, but I think the idea that most are not good is not an overstatement. In Ireland I was allowed to try all the whistles in a shop and of the 20 Gens I sampled, 2 were good.
I agree with JessieKD. I have rummaged thru plenty and found few good as well. The main problems are unstable raspy bell notes, or balky higher registers. Sure, take em home and tweak em and you’ll sound just like Junior, but that’s only after!
I have been practicing today on a new whistle and one thing that struck me: many whistles are “A-part” whistles. That means, that you can launch into a reel and get thru the A part, but when you crack up to the next octave for the B part you run into balkiness which impedes your smooth delivery. Now this happens on many whistles and its the first thing I check when I try a new one. Many whistles sound great in that first octave then suck in the second at least on a few of the notes, usually B but sometimes A or G. Or put in a more subtle way, they force you to work too hard in the second octave to be fun or fluent. You survive the B part, then sound good on the A upon the repeat. Does not help yer playing self-esteem atall.
A good example is Touch Me If You Dare, my typical try-out tune. The A part only goes up to a single high G twice. Then you launch into the turn, much of which stays up there. Man of the House does a similar thing.
And to put a final point on it, when you go into the whistle store, you are often overly impressed by the A part and gun-shy about sailing into the B. Happened to me at LITM when I bought the Sweet Maple long ago. Very sweet first octave, celebratedly bad second. I wasn’t as accomplished as a player also to be fair and it sure sounded better than their Harpers. But having to overblow to keep the high B going ruins your speed and agility.
Deidre, I hope my sense of humor hasn’t caused trouble here.
I’m in the business of tweaking Sweetones, Shaws and Generations. What I listed was my inventory. I was trying to make a joke, pretending that owning 60 Sweetones, etc. is typical of people who post on this board. Sorry if I caused confusion.
Best wishes,
Jerry
P.S. Mouse update. The new mouse is intriguing. He likes sunflower seeds, doesn’t seem to have much taste for chocolate. This would make me wonder if he’s truly a card carrying mouse, except I’ve seen him, and he is in fact, a perfectly normal mouse.
He’s already eaten about half the sunflower seeds Nano sent for Ralph II. And he seems to have relocated his base of operations from the pantry to my office. This is the official purpose of my ongoing Mouse Domestication, Rehabilitation and Training Program (MDRTP), so I guess we’re on the right track.
For those new to this saga or who’ve forgotten the standard MDRTP operating procedures: As long as there’s only one mouse in the house, I’ll make a pet of him in such a way that he hangs out in my office instead of the pantry. As soon as I see evidence of more than one, I catch them with a MiceCube humane trap, release them in the woods, and the Global Pennywhistle Tweaking and Production Consortium headquarters carries on with no mouse on the staff until another one shows up. That takes from a matter of days to, in this most recent case, a couple of months.
I wouldn’t say that this mouse has actually joined the GPTPC headquarters staff yet, however. He’s still in a getting acquainted with the facilities stage, and hasn’t yet settled down to a steady work routine.
Ralph I was companionable. He would squeak when excited (by food, for example), hang out and make eye contact as he nibbled. Ralph II was a hit and run mouse. He would grab a bite and then dart off. And he was extremely clumsy. Every now and then, I would hear a little explosion under my desk when he ran afoul of something. So far, mouse number three is the most secretive of the lot. He has managed to eat all the sunflower seeds I’ve put out, but I’ve only seen him once.
There’s considerable work to be done here at GPTPC headquarters, so I hope mouse number three overcomes his reticence and develops into a productive member of the staff. But even if he just stays away from the pantry and takes his meals in my office, I will have accomplished the official MDRTP goal.
I’ll keep you posted with my usual periodic updates.
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