Whats your thoughts in regards to the consistent quality between manufactured and handmade.
It’s been my experience that manufactured whistles are usually of better quality as a whole compared to handmade. I believe that this is due to the consistency in the manufacturing process and through quality assurance within the manaufacturing processes. (just my experience and opinion). whats yours?
It seems hard to generalize.
Are Burkes “manufactured”? Both of mine are great.
But my Feadog and Oak sucked until they got their handmade Whitecaps. My Gen probably sucked before Jerry tweaked it, as my Clarke original did before I tweaked it. I don’t think any of them (unmodified) would match my Humphrey, Hoovers, Busmans, Bleazey, Syn, Weston…
Of course, maybe it’s just that their designs suck, but I’ve heard of good ones of each of these, so maybe not.
I’ve had a couple of handmade whistles that were a bit on the crude side, and one that had a tuning problem, so they aren’t all perfect.
However, it’s hard to imagine anything manufactured being prettier than the Bleazey blackwood, the Busman bloodwood, or the Humphrey Stealth.
Which wooden whistles are manufactured?
Where does Sindt fit into this? It’s also excellent.
I think it depends on the maker. I just got an Overton low F today (secondhand), and it’s excellent.
Mike burke said this to me in email recently:
even though we fabricate our parts with CNC (Computer Numeric Controlled) machines, we still do all the same hand tuning, hand voicing and hand polishing that all the so called hand made models have.
Obviously it depends on the quality of the hand that’s doing the making and the machines that are mass producing. Cheap whistles are marketed more as toys than as instruments, even though, in the right hands, they clearly are musical instruments. Quality control is often not good.
Even that elusive ‘good Generation’ will come to you partly hand made in that the tweaking involves doing by hand something that might have been done by the manufacturer.
I should have thought that a hand tuned and voiced whistle is very much more likely to be be consistent and reliable than a whistle that lacks this individual attention. Other than that it depends on the quality of the machinery, the quality of the design and the skill of the maker.
Time for a story: Many years ago, two major auto companies each set out to launch new luxury nameplates. I am simplifying to make for a better story. Keeping that in mind, one company’s philosophy was to use as much technology as possible, the other was to use as much handcrafting, human touch as possible. The nameplates were Lexus and Infiniti. Lexus has decisively won that marketplace battle.
Some might say that the underlying companies, their resources, their management, were more responsible than the philosophy and that Toyota might have won the battle over Nissan/Datsun no matter what approach they each chose.
That said, let me add that I believe there is something intangible about anything handmade by a skilled craftsman or craftswoman. Especially for musical instruments, there is a human spirit that a machine can never duplicate.
I’m with Mike here,apart from the Kpros,all the Chieftain and Kerry whistles are fabricted but hand voiced ,tested and polished thus defining the term HAND FINISHED.You do get great concistency from CNC machines and they don’t stop for tea and stickies.
Phil.
From time to time there has also been much controversy in the Boehm flute world as to exactly what the terms “hand crafted,” “hand made,” and “hand finished” exactly mean, and what the differences are between them.
Although there has been much argument…and angst…nothing of any substance that I can tell at least has ever been gained. In the world of expensive flutes, at the end of the day, an instrument stands or falls on its capabilities, not its pedigree.
I think this is also true of whistles. I am far more interested in how a whistle plays than in how it was made.
The argument that “hand made” or “hand finished” is somehow superior smells to me of ego, as does the argument that machining is more accurate or more consistent.
–James
It has always amused me that in whistle making (& other instruments) we listen for a sound that says ‘hand of man’, but when we look at it, we want the sort of finish and consistency you can only get through production machining.
It has always amused me that in whistle making (& other instruments) we listen for a sound quality that says ‘hand of man’, but when we look at it, we want the sort of finish and consistency you can only get through production machining.
Well, as I said, I can’t imagine any way to mass produce whistles that look any cleaner and better that my Bleazey blackwood, Busman bloodwood, and Humphrey stealth. All three of my CPVC Hoovers are very well-finished, as well. I got my Sindt secondhand, but it seems flawless, too.
Nothing wrong with the way any of them sound, either, though they match my personal taste to different degrees.
I think you have a good point as far as it goes. But you need to check out some of the hand-made instruments out there, the very high end Haynes and Powell and Lunn flutes, for example. We are talking about instruments that both musically and visually are stunning works of art, made to an extremely high standard of workmanship and consistency.
On the Irish side, my Hamilton blackwood is no less a work of art. Simple system flute makers routinely make their instruments by hand because except for perhaps a very few, the quantity of business they do would never pay for mass-production facilities.
–James