Hi all and Happy Yuletide.
Does anyone know if John is still around?
I just received one of his D whistles I bought from a guy in BC, and the shipping tube looked like one of those dinner roll packages that you smack on the edge of a table. Gave the tube a massive crease and was hoping to see if John might have an old barrel around the shop.
Any info on how to reach him would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Séamus
I was in touch with John last year and used this address: sindtwhistle@aol.com
Meantime, you might find another whistle body will do. I suspect it’s a similar bore to Generation etc; worth trying for the sake of about £8. Bit of luck you’ll get a decent one that’s playable even if it doesn’t fit the Sindt head.
Good luck & happy Christmas!
Thank you very much for the effort and the info.
Very much obliged. I’m actually going to have a go at annealing the tube and straightening it woth a mandrel. We’ll see
Thanks again
Séamus
In the year or two I was playing a Sindt D I was using a different body on it anyway.
I can’t recall at the moment what it was, but there was something I didn’t like about the scale built into the Sindt body, but I didn’t want to carve on it (for resale purposes).
The body is just a tube with holes in it and you can put any body on any whistle as long as the diameters work. I switched the body on my Killarney D as well…I think half my High D’s and High Eb’s have different bodies, I go with whatever works best.
If I was in your situation I’d bin the damaged body, stick in something that worked, and go on playing.
John Sindt used to (and maybe still does) tune the top tone hole so that the C# is in tune. He expects Cnat to be half holed. Hence, the oxx ooo fingered Cnat tends to be quite sharp.
I’ve heard others mention this about the tuning on Sindt’s, but I don’t know if it still holds true on more recent ones.
Personally, I prefer to manage the trade-off between C# and Cnat by sacrificing the C# a bit (making it a bit flat) to bring the oxx ooo fingered Cnat more into tune.
Paddler yes I think that was probably it.
I don’t like it if oxx|oox doesn’t give an in-tune C natural.
If it’s an ordinary brass-tube High Whistle I’ll just use another tube. I have piles of old Generation etc parts collected over the years.
If it’s not, like my lovely Colin Goldie Low C, I’ll put a bit of tape on Hole 1.
Then there are tubes where both Hole 1 and Hole 4 give notes that are sharp of everything else. I played my lovely old Generation C for years with tape on those holes before biting the bullet, chopping the tube at the bottom, and carving out Holes 2, 3, 5, and 6 producing a perfectly in-tune whistle that I’ve been playing now for over 40 years.
If Jon is unreachable you could see if a trumpet or trombone repairman could sort you out. sindtwhistle@aol.com