My first whistle was a feadog D, which I did some basic sandpaper tweaking on. I’ve had it for quite a while, and eventually put a hoover whitecap on that tube, but I bought another feadog and kept the tweaked mouthpiece.
In a fit of boredom this evening, I did the “wax in the gap” tweak on the feadog and my 3 Generation Bb’s. This made a substantial improvement to all of them, and the end result is that the feadog and the brass Gen are now quite fun to play. Those two in particular sound sweeter, and although the feadog is still on the rough side, it is musically rough now. It has focused grit now rather than hoarseness.
It kinda helped my Oak C, but that one’s still pretty hoarse in the upper register. It’s almost playable now.
If anyone wants to have a go at tweaking the two nickel gen’s, I’d be open to a trade.
Sometimes it’s amazing what a little bit of wax or poster putty will do for the playability and sound of a whistle.
Regarding the Oak C, if you really want a good cheap C whistle, I’d recommend to buy the Waltons C (in either brass or nickel). It’s Walton’s best whistle, in my opinion, and the absolute best cheap C there is. Much better than an Oak.
I’ll keep that in mind. The oak LOOKS really classy, but is the worst out-of-the-box whistle experience I’ve ever had.
I had a keyless McGee flute on order for a while, and so I ordered a silkstone C in PVC to cover my bases. I canceled the order for the McGee after I discovered and fixed some unsuspected problems with my flute, but decided to go ahead and take the Silkstone whenever it arrives. I’ll be happy with that whenever it arrives… I just wanted to see if I could turn the cheapies I already had into real instruments
If this tweak helps so much – and I believe it does, since I can hear some “turbulance” in my un-tweaked Feadog which I can’t hear in my tweaked Sweetone – then I’m wondering why so many of the cheap whistles need it? It’s hard to believe it would significantly add to the cost of the whistle to design the mold for the fipple without that gap, but they all seem to have it – including the Sweetone, which has a fipple which, AFAIK, was designed by Michael Copeland, who knows a thing or two about making whistles sound good.
People say it has something to do with material shrinkage in the manfacturing process. You’d think they’d be able to fill it afterwards, but then it’d severely affect Jerry Freeman’s profit margins
I took my waxed, sanded, otherwise surgeried feadog to a session last night and played a few tunes on it in a context where I didn’t have to worry about annoying my neighbors. It’s gone from being an unplayable mess to a pretty good instrument. Easy to play, good sound. I think it’s still a little harsh on the high end but much of that blended away with the other instruments. Perhaps it was a bit of an asset!
