A few months ago i bought a ‘shush’ whistle. A generation whistle with tweaked head to get a softer voice. The whistle head of my ‘Shush’ was altered by putting in a brass piece. This piece makes the sound hole shorter and and forms a new sound blade which is more rounded than the original Generation head. It works just fine. Soon i wondered if this was something that could be done to my other cheap whistles because for home-practice if find most of them just too loud. First attempts at this were no good. I got no sound at all or just a horrible squeek so i left it to rest and play my whistles some more.
the last two weeks i tried it again and although the results still are not perfect i managed to hush-up many of my cheap flutes. In a hardware store i bought some brass fittings with wich you can put a painting to a wall. They are approximatele 5 mm wide and will fit in the most plastic heads of cheap whistles.
After some cutting and bending and ruining my first set of these brass fittings i managed to get a few good ones. The result is that i managed to ‘hush’ up (get a softer sound) most of my whistles (i live in a house with thin walls and not every neighbour loves my whistling…) Most of the whistles get a better voicing, a more rounded sound (less squeeking) and less volume. There are also some downsides to this. You also loose some of the breathiness of the whistle. To me that is not a problem but how much breathiness you want is a personal thing. Another thing is that you have to blow very softly to get the bottom notes. Breath control is needed! The easiness with which you can blow the bottom notes you can vary. A problem which you can get by this tweak is that there is too little room left over in the head to get a sound. All you then hear is a lot of noise of the air and (sometimes) a very soft note. Trying other fittings of a different angle might help. My experience until now is that a 60 degrees angle works fine most of the time. You might also consider changing the room between the blade and the other end of the sound hole. You might even considering filing off some of the sound blade to get more space. But the last is irreversible of course. So that’s a last resort. You might ruin your whistle head with thuis.
After some trying you can glue the brass fitting to the whistle whith two-component or epoxy-glue or you can ‘glue’ it with some poster putty so you can always get your whistle back to the original state (e.g. for sessions).
On the photos you can see what kind of shape you have to make. It is a sort of sled-shape. The first one i made with a electricians pliers with which you can cut and bend. Then i remembered i had a mini-set of pliers so i could work more easily.
on the GEn it is possible but you probably will have to cut something of the cutting edge (well… you already did that…) to make enough room because else you won’t get a tone from it. Especially the bottom note is critical. If there is not enough room then you just won’t be able to get the lowest tone. Instead you get a high note or nothing at all or it goes to easy into the second octave. I have excellent results with my Feadog C-whistle because it has lots of room in the head. But i also tweaked my generation BB and some Waltons (C-whistle and D-Mellow) with good effect.
For anyone who is interested in ‘hushing up’ his/her cheap whistle with plastic head.
If you want to blow your whistle at night but do not want to wake the neighbours…
If you send me your plastic head of your generation/Feadog/Walton/Clare/Oak, I will tweak it for you, free of charge.
So, for now, no costs involved except of course the postage back and fourth.
pm me for my adress details if you are interested.
Did you try putting anything in the cavity under the wind way. Some people use sticky tac or poster tac same thing different brand. Helps to stabilize the tone.
I already did that to all my cheap whistles. Thankx for the advice. It helps for some whistles but with some brands there is little difference. But all of my cheap whistles are 'poster-puttied’now.
Well, milk carton might work also but i think in a few weeks it will get all mushy because of the condensation of your breath. But for trying it is of course ideal. But the copper/brass inlays i use don’t have that problem, that’s why i use them.
Good idea, it just ruined my feadog the other night, because I tried to “shush” it a bit.
Now I used the plastic form a dvd case, and it worked, it’s quieter and need less air to play.
Of course all kinds of sorts of material work just fine. I never tried a piece of DVD case but if you look closely to whistles which have been tweaked by specialists you will find all sorts of (plastic) material. I think the advantage of copper/brass is that you can bend it into shape. With plastics this is sometimes hard to do but you just have to try. Sometimes you will get good results and sometimes you will not.