Curiousity got the best of me and I jumped at an opportunity the other night at two unused Hohner whistles, one in Bb, and one in low G. It will be some days before they arrive, but given the time period I expect they were made, I was wondering- Do the whistles have lead in them? I am hoping not. There were pictures supplied, but unfortunately none showing it from an angle that would allow me to determine this. I’d appreciate it if any owners of Hohner whistles could chime in and let me know!
I wound up reworking a C model a little while back and it did not have a lead fipple block, but it was lead soldered into place. The fipple plug itself was nickel plated brass (same as the whistle body). It looked like they just put a smear of solder paste on the inside areas to put it in place. Mind you I’ve only seen and worked on the one, so I can’t say if this is the case on every Hohner whistle.
I have already answered in PM, but for the benefit of others who’d like to know:
They have a nickelled brass cylindrical body with the fipple made as a shaped, hollow box of the same material, soldered into place.
I own a soprano C, alto G and i’ve got an unused Bb on its way from an Ebay seller in Greece, looks like he picked up a box full of them from a toy shop based on the number of Hohners he’s listed. (i’m assuming yours is the same seller) ?
Both the C and G are very good through both octaves although the G needed a bit of work on the blade to get it just right, i’m hoping the Bb is just as playable. if you play them Kwela style with the mouthpiece further into the mouth it opens up the second octave a bit although it does flatten the tone slightly which is all part of the Kwela sound.
Mine have a none lead fipple block but there might be some lead solder on the inside.
Here’s a couple of clips from my you tube channel to give you an idea of what the G sounds like.
When it arrived the owner had already removed the plug, but from what I understand prior to that they weren’t able to get any sound from it at all. I machined out a Delrin replacement plug and fitted it and then had to spend a fair amount of time straightening out the the ramp edge and removing jagged and jutting edges out of the window/windway area before I was able to get it stable enough to actually play it. Here’s a sound clip of the whistle when the mods were finished.
There is a guy from Greece who has a large supply of Bb and G Hohner whistles in new, unused comdition. Some friends and I had bid on them, didn’t win, and we all got 2nd chance offers. It is hard to believe there is a big stockpile of new Hohners in Greece. My fear is that they are knock offs. I hope you got genuine Hohners, but sometimes, if it is too good to be true…
From his other auctions, it looks like he cleared out the stock of an old toy shop. I guess weirder things have happened, but everything about the whistle I got (a low G) looks pretty clean and well done. All markings are clear and straight and well done. The joints are nicely soldered and I can’t find any sharp edges or extraneous material, the tubing seems pretty sturdy. If it’s a knockoff, it’s a good knockoff! If I understood Dale’s article right, the machines a/o materials used to make the old Hohners are no more, so any knockoff would have to be entirely reverse engineered. Not sure if that’s really worth the effort.
“any knockoff would have to be entirely reverse engineered. Not sure if that’s really worth the effort.”
Easily worth the effort.
Someone tried to sell me a counterfeit silver peso that supposedly had only about $12 worth of silver in it. The coin was beautiful, and looked real. When I weighed it, I discovered it was fake. Fake items are made for many products in China for almost nothing. A whistle that looks like a Hohner would be simple and cheap to make in China. The way it sounds is another matter. How does it play? If it sounds wonderful, it is almost certainly real, if the sound is not great…
Oh, no doubt faking sòme things is very much worth the effort! A silver dollar (or peso) is clearly such a thing. At the very least (and at present) you’ve got something like $US18 worth of silver. Depending on condition, date, mint mark and so forth some of them can fetch tens of thousands of dollars – why is it I always see dealers with five or six listings for !REAL! 1804 dollars? That’s worth faking, and an 1804 dollar is tolerably easy to fake.
Is it worthwhile to fake a really high end whistle? I think maybe. But it would not be my first choice! Perhaps a Copeland or a Thin Weasel. The price you could realise on the sale of half a dozen of the things might make up for the work you put into it. And, really, for all that effort, you might just as well study the work of the masters and go in to making your own whistles! Who knows, you might just end up being the next Overton or Copeland!
But is it really worthwhile faking a mid-low grade whistle, even if it is somewhat rare? (Keeping in mind that rare, obviously, does not always equate to high priced!) Sure, labor is cheap in China and yadayada, but in the end, to make a reasonably good fake musical instrument will require some level of technical expertise and knowhow. And in the end, again, why fake a relatively cheap whistle, when you can just as easily fake an Overton and realise twice the price, or a Copeland and realise three to eight times the price?
Another thing to consider is the economy of scale. Fakers can easily try to dump fake coins by the score or hundred (Ebay, for example). There’s a huge market for silver coins. Really, in comparison, how large is the market for any kind of good whistle make? How many fake whistles do you have to sell and at what price just in order to break even on your initial investment? Yes, lots of fake things come out of China, but for the most part, those things – when real – are high end, expensive and widely sought after. Gucci, Coach, Rolex, Tiffany, etc. How many fake Copelands could I reasonably sell, knowing how small the market actually is, as opposed to fake coins or fake Rolex watches with a much broader market?
I think not a little suspicion would be raised if someone just happened to have fifty Copeland low Ds for sale over a period of six weeks. And yes, the thought did indeed cross my mind that this Greek seller with his hoard of a few dozen whistles might just be selling fakes! – But it’s not like the things weren’t mass produced in the thousands, back in the day. That, plus the fact he’s selling them in the right keys and the back story and the nature of the other merchandise he is flogging (1970s era toys, leastways when I last looked) leads me to conclude that he is most likely telling the truth.
All this said, I of course can not say with 100% certainty that it is the real deal. I know it looks good, appears to be well made, and it sounds pretty good (I’m certainly no expert at manipulating the blade, but I think I’m much closer to getting a decent sound out of it than when it arrived). So I think there’s a pretty good probability that it is the real deal. Either that or a better than average fake! A better player and a better tweaker than me could probably offer a more definitive answer, though.
any knockoff would have to be entirely reverse engineered. Not sure if that’s really worth the effort.
While I agree, in that I highly doubt anyone is selling knockoff hohner whistles, I do find your sentence interesting. This is because I heard that Hohners were actually originally “reverse engineered” from some South African kid’s Bb whistle, and that’s what their model is entirely based off of! Hohners themselves are knockoffs! Or is this not true?
I mean, of course all models and makes borrowed ideas from somewhere. However, I read that the Hohner whistles were meant to be a copy of one person’s whistle in specific.
I read here in C&F not too long ago that Hohner made use of the old style Generation whistle as the basis for theirs. Of course, this doesn’t make Hohner a knockoff – it’s properly branded and presumably the makers of Generation had ample time to examine those whistles made by a legit company and sue the pants of them if they they believed any kind of infringement were taking place. A knockoff, of course, is not a legitimate product made by a legitimate company. It’s an exact(ish) copy of a legitimate product made by a third party with the intent to defraud the public by making them think what they’re buying is the real thing made by the real company.
And yes, there is much truth to your last statement – there’s really only so many things you can do to a tube with six holes and a whistle-type mouthpiece at the end! Sooner or later, someone is going to end up making a whistle that looks an awful lot like someone else’s whistle, and that whistle isn’t necessarily a knockoff! Unless you’re willing to make – and someone is willing to learn! – a whistle with the block down at the bottom end and a tiny brass crook so you can still blow through it, and then four finger holes on the front and two thumb holes on the back, almost anything you do will be reminiscent of some kind of whistle made by someone.
There are a few ways to test for lead. One way is to buy a lead test kit. There is one from 3M that is $8 or $9. Another way is to rub a sheet of paper on the end of the whistle. If it leaves a dark grey streak on the paper, it is most likely lead. Pencils used to be made of lead. If it is lead, you want to either prime and then paint the lead, or perhaps cover with nail polish.
You shouldn’t have to adjust the blade on a genuine mint Hohner.
Also, do these whistles have a nice patina? An unused 40+ year old shiny metal object, should have a beautiful patina from the aging and oxidizing of the metal. If it looks like the item was made last month, it probably was.
Looks like the surface doesn’t look entirely new, but it’s still pretty shiny. I’m pretty skeptical that people are knocking off Hohner whistles. I would expect that something unused and wrapped up properly would build up a patina extremely slowly, about like what is seen here.. but I’m no expert on that matter, so maybe not.
You can also see in the picture on this particular listing that he has a box of 1 dozen of them. I suppose this explains why he has put so many up.
My G and Bb from the Ebay auction are in Stockholm atm, in transit. By this time tomorrow or wednesday latest i’ll be able to chime in with some info/pics
supergeo wrote : ‘You shouldn’t have to adjust the blade on a genuine mint Hohner.’
The alto G that i worked on wasn’t from this seller it was a second hand instrument and once the blade had been adjusted it sounded fine.
Incidentally my Bb arrived today from Greece, it looks sounds and feels like a genuine Hohner whistle, brand new to. i don’t think that a whistle would develop a patina if its been wrapped up and stored in a box which it looks like these have. Hohners are nickel plated brass, the more you play them the more the brass shows through which is what has happened on my G and C.
As for the lead, i think its in the solder on the inside of the whistle.
Well, before writing the last post I just had a short time to play it, rather rushed before work. I realized the whistles actually had moisture in the windway which was making it more sensitive and nasty in the second octave. After getting it warmed up and playing it for a bit, it does play better, and isn’t a bad whistle. I’d still prefer a generation Bb, but it’s not as horrible as first thought. Pretty unique, while at the same time in the generation sort of vein, I’d say. They are clogging easily for me, which is strange because I used to be very prone to clogging whistles, and it doesn’t happen anymore, but it did on these. Narrow flat windway
The whistles are both shiney, but with little tiny scuff looking whitish smears here and there from age. Bits of early white pre-corrosion sort of colouration on the shiny surface. Some of them are in the shape of a fingerprint. Glad to get a chance to try them out.
Regarding the lead- On one of them the block and rest of the whistle seem joined nearly seamlessly, as though it’s all one piece of metal. On the other one you can see a little bit where the block is joined to the body in a tiny seam along the edge of the block in one tiny spot. The body shows a bit of brass colour there, and you can tell it’s soldered , but it’s all pretty much inside the block and not contacting you. I still am trying to stop myself from habitually sucking in the moisture in the windway, because I don’t know if any is in there or not, but I don’t think there are any points of lead contact on one, and extremely extremely minimal on the other.
I got a couple other things I was looking forward to in the mail on the same day these came in, so haven’t given them a good long playing yet, but will this week.
That’s worth faking, and an 1804 dollar is tolerably easy to fake.