My Clarke MEG (C and D) tweak experience

Whistle
1

My Clarke MEG D came attached to the book “3 Minutes to Flute” by David Harp (I have since switched to the “The Clarke Tin Whistle” by Bill Ochs). It would clog with moisture after a minute of playing, and then the notes were squeaky, buzzy and virtually unrecognizable. The bottom 2 notes wouldn’t play at all. Drying the whistle by slinging out the water and swabbing it with QTips and slips of tissue in the windway didn’t help much. Nor did the trick of coating the windway with soap. I gave up and went to Lark in the Morning and bought a Generation D (Lark was more expensive than some other retailers, but they did let me try out a bunch of whistles in the store).

Still, I needed a second practice whistle and I did not want to throw away the MEG. I found Jerry Freeman’s tweak tutorial on C&F and went to work. The MEG mouthpiece was not glued on and was very easy to remove. The windway was clear and did not have any stray plastic bits. The first tweak I tried was to dull the sound blade with a 600 sandpaper, because the MEG jumped to the higher octave in the D note with very little breath pressure and there was some buzz in the low notes. I made a sanding board by gluing a strip of 600 sand paper to a wood coffee stirrer, that was almost the same width as the sound window. Blunting the blade did stabilize the D, but it also defocused the C natural (OXXOOO), added hiss and reduced the volume on the D and other notes.

Filling the cavity below the windway with Elmer’s Tack (a non-drying poster putty) did boost the output of the low notes, but did not fix the C natural and there was still too much hiss. And the MEG was still clogging.

At this point, I decided to experiment with the length of the sound blade. I sanded the sound blade until it was about 1/40" (.025") shorter than it was originally. I cut a new blade out from a piece of clear plastic off a blister package. This plastic is thinner than from a soda bottle, but is stiff enough for this purpose. I stuck the new blade over the MEG blade with a small dot of Elmer’s Tack and played notes, adjusting the blade length. If the blade was too long, the low notes suffered. In the end, I chose a length that was a tiny bit longer than the original length. After cleaning off the Elmer’s Tack, I glued the new blade on with a drop of Krazy Glue. Krazy Glue is supposed to be “instant,” but I was able to position the new blade before the glue set.

After letting it dry overnight, I played the MEG again to see if I needed to adjust the blade length some more. It was fine. I sealed the seam where the new blade and old blade met with another drop of Krazy Glue applied from the underside, because condensation was seeping into the seam. After letting that dry overnight, I trimmed excess plastic from the other end of the blade and spread another drop of Krazy glue with a toothpick over the top of the blade to seal the other edges and to strengthen it. The resulting blade has a very sharp edge compared to the original.

My modded MEG is now very playable. The C natural is focused again, the low notes are less sensitive to jumping up - although not as good in that respect as my Generation whistle and the excess hiss is gone. Best of all, the MEG is MUCH less prone to clogging. It is still playable even with condensation dripping from the end of the tube and flooding the sound blade. The sharper edge on the sound blade may have something to do with MEG’s resistance to moisture. I still have to swab inside the sound window and windway occasionally, but I look forward to playing this whistle. I like the tweaked MEG so much, I made a pouch for it.

2

Very thorough job it looks like. I’m new to whistles, but I’ve tweaked and ruined an awful lot of whistles in my short time here. I’ve found that the way you stick that extra bit of plastic on can make a big difference.
Sticking it on the top usually makes for a quieter, but purer sounding whistle, while sneaking in the extra bit of plastic underneath preserves more of the tubular chiff sound and volume. And the deal with the bevel at the end of the windway can make a huge difference too. If you havn’t yet, search for bevel tweaks. You’ll find a lot about putting a bevel on the bottom of the windway. Big help on the lowwer octave. I’ve used that one on most of the whistles I’ve tweaked. You can also put one in the top. One at least two whistles, a bevel on the top helped bring up a flat second octave. I try to visualize what it’s doing to the airstream and how it’s going to hit the blade differently.
Besides the fact there are soooo many factors affecting the sound and intonation, every different whistle reacts a little differently to the tweak you use.
Every few weeks I order a handful and tweak/improve/ruin them. Actually I’ve only fully ruined one or two, though there are a bunch that just didn’t turn out to my liking.

3

Excellent work!

thanks for sharing here, always great to hear about tweaking adventures.

4

Thanks Vomitbunny and Bloomfield!

Vomitbunny, on the topic of beveling:

My modded MEG was sounding kind of flat, so I pulled up the mouthpiece to sharpen the sound. Unfortunately, the D note was back to being skittish - it was jumping up an octave at the lightest breath.

I took out my sanding board, removed the mouthpiece and beveled the new sound blade - just a bit - by holding the board at an acute angle above the blade edge and then below. The sanding action was very gentle. The blade length remained the same. The bevel stabilized the D. This morning, I took the MEG outside to play. The outside temperature was in the cool 50s and there was drizzle in the air. Within a few seconds of playing, the MEG was dripping with condensate from the bottom and there was a puddle of condensate on the blade. The MEG kept on playing - the D was sometimes squeaky, but with breath control on my part, it was still recognizably a D.

I will try bevelling the end of the windway. There is not much room for sanding action in the windway. Maybe I can scrape a bevel with an Xacto knife.

5

Have you tried beveling the end of the windway? Beveling the bottom edge usually helps strengthen those lower notes, and seems to give the middle range a bit warmer tone. It’s where the air leaves the windway (the place you blow). Bottom edge. I usually start with a very small screwdriver (like for electronings) and run it across the bottom edge just to flatten that corner a little bit. Then a little more. Don’t go too far with it or you’ll be having to adjust the blade forward again. If you go too too far, you can just about ruin the whistle. I’ve always been able to get them playable again after ruining them, but it’s harder to get a really good tone.
Ps. take the mouthpiece off and reach in from the open end. It’s where the air leaves the windway-just above where you put your blue tac. Although you can fix any blade problem no matter how bad, if you go too far with this one you can have a permanant mess. And don’t touch the top edge unless you’r having problems you can’t resold other ways. Beveling the bottom edge spreads out the path of the air and lowwers it a tad. Changes the tendancies of the eddies too of course. This is’nt an exact science, at least for me it isn’t. I’ve just been messing with it for a few months. I have a hard time getting consistancy. I have at least one really really good whistle of most cheap brands, but I also wind up with several “also ran” whistles which sound and play nicely, but just don’t have that magic quality to them.
Oh, and it helps to buy already tweaked whistles from the pros to help you get an idea how your doing.

6

Vomitbunny,

I went ahead and beveled the windway edges last evening. I used an Xacto knife and lightly scraped both the bottom and top edges three or four times. Then I lightly rubbed my sanding board over the windway to remove any plastic debris - just one or two times. That’s all I was willing to do. There may be a way to reverse the beveling, btw; more on that below.

I can’t tell if the upper registers were affected, but the D on the MEG is very rich and stable. It’s hard to be sure how much the beveling affected this because I discovered that the overall effect of any tweak can be altered if the mouthpiece is shifted up or down. Thus, if I was not able to get the mouthpiece back into the same position as before the a mod, any changes to the MEG sound may not be solely due to the mod itself.

Still, the sound is lovely and the C natural is stable too.

A more detailed description of what I did:

After beveling the windway, I also blunted the sound blade to see if that had any beneficial effect. I only ran the sanding board over the blade edge two or three times very lightly, but it was a mistake. The E note was badly affected - it became skittish and lost it’s purity. Moreover, the back pressure on several notes went up.

I believe the problem was not strictly the blunting per se, but due to the 600 grade sandpaper (the finest I could find) creating a relatively rough edge. If I sanded it anymore, the blade would be shortened too much and I don’t think it would have smoothed the edge any better.

The solution: I spread a thin layer of Krazy Glue over the blade edge. Krazy Glue is an acrylic resin glue. When it dried, it created a new smooth edge on the blade and restored some of the material I sanded away as well. The E note played nicely again and the high back pressure was gone.

I believe that this technique can save a blade, so long as not too much material was removed by sanding. It may even work to rebuild the windway edges, though I have not tried it. In that case, I would put a layer or two of KG on the windway edge(s) and then sand them sharp.

I will post more comments about the modded MEG in a few days when I’ve had more time to play it.

Here are some more mod tips:

I didn’t have a beeswax candle. Before replacing the mouthpiece, I rubbed the area around the tip of the whistle body with a stick lip balm (like ChapStick). It has a high wax content. This idea came from the Thin Weasel website.

The top of the mouthpiece around the sound window was marred from my sanding board going astray. Where the sandpaper touched it, the plastic was abraded and lighter in color than the surrounding area. I rubbed a little NU-FINISH car polish over the scatches and abrasions. Voila!!! It minimized the abrasions and partially restored the look of the original finish. It’s not quite good as new, but very acceptable.

NU-FINISH has no abrasives, so I polished up the body of the MEG as well. The black paint on the MEG now has a nice sheen to it and a protective coating.

The only thing left to address might be the spots of rust inside the MEG. With all the moisture dripping out from there, the rust can only get worse.

OK, that’s it for now. Will post more later.

7

Oh, regarding buying a tweaked whistle, I have been considering a Jerry-tweaked Clarke Original or a Jerry-tweaked Shaw. I don’t if I will be able to play it very much, because I don’t like the feel of the wood fipple on my lips (I was able to try an un-tweaked Shaw at Lark In The Morning). However, these instruments represent an early whistle design that would be nice in my small collection, and Jerry’s tweaked whistles are all highly recommended.

On the other hand, I may try tweaking these myself. I don’t know yet.

Tweaking an inexpensive whistle like the MEG is a real treat. It’s cheap, so if the tweak fails, little was lost. If it succeeds, then it’s a great bargain, unique and customized by one’s own hands. And plus, one gets all that tweak experience for more tweaking later. :slight_smile:

The only items I had to buy for my MEG tweak so far have been the sandpaper and Chap-Aid (the ChapStick knock-off from Walgreen’s). They cost me less than $2. The pouch was made from a piece of craft felt (gold with charcoal mottling) that cost me 20 cents and I already had the yarn (a sport-weight mohair yarn - but any sport-weight yarn could have been used). It was sewn together with a simple blanket stitch.

8

Well. I have been converted into a tweaked sweetone/meg fanatic. I wondered what the big deal was about them, until I started messing with one. Cut that air down to about half by moving the blade forward and you get this amazingly sweet birdlike upper regester and still keeps the tubular chiff in the lowwer register. I did find out one thing. It’s been bebated whether the meg is exactly like the sweetone in design, not counting materials. Well, the blade I cut and put in the sweetone was too big (barely) when I tried to put it in the meg…;
so…now…we…know…

9

Vomitbunny,

Thanks for your comments. Coming, as they do, from someone who has done lots of tweaks, it is welcome validation that the MEG is well worth a tweaker’s attention. Hmmm… seems like you moved the blade more forward than I did. I’ll post my followup comments about the sound quality in a few days.

I am thinking of tweaking a MEG in C too. The only thing holding me back is that the local Lark In The Morning charges $8 for a MEG, which is too high, IMHO. Maybe I will order online. I don’t plan to play it very much since most music is transcribed for D whistles, but it’d be nice to have a MEG set.

10

try thewhistleshop
they were 3 bucks last time I ordered
Oh, and yes, I move the blade quiet a bit forward. Shooting for a very quiet pure sound. It still leaves a lot of lowwer register chiff. I havn’t bothered trying the underneath blade tweak, or shaping the blade much yet. The on top blade tweak with just a plain flat blade works mighty well. I still just have it stuck on with blu tac. Hey! That’s a feature! It’s adjustable!

11

VB, blades tacked on with poster putty tend to fly off if you blow too hard. I know from experience. :smiley:

I wonder what is going on at LarkInTheMorning.com. After I posted here earlier today, I checked the price of the MEG in D on their site. It was on sale for $6. Now, just hours later, it’s back up to $8. The MEG in C is $7 (previously on sale for $6).

I took your advice though and ordered a couple of MEGs from whistleshop.com. Hope they’re in stock.

12

Well, my order from WhistleShop.com arrived. I will update this thread again after I have spent some time evaluating the new MEGs.

My findings so far:

  1. the new MEG D is less prone to overload and clogging, but is still to sensitive for me. The clogging occurred even after the mouthpiece was moved up a little to change the tuning.

  2. I think the new MEG D has a slightly brighter sound than the original MEG. It’s hard to be sure about this because my first MEG has been tweaked. With the new MEG, filling in the cavity under the windway with poster putty dampens the brightness of the sound and reduces hiss, but it also seems to increase the whistle’s sensitivity to overload. I decided to take the putty out.

  3. Beveling the bottom edge of the windway exit reduces the new MEG D’s sensitivity to overload. In fact, the new MEG seems to respond better with this mod alone than the whole mod of my first MEG.

I am going to try VomitBunny’s idea of decreasing the area of the sound window on one of the new MEG Ds by half.

13

Along with the two MEG Ds from WhistleShop.com, I also ordered a set of MEG Cs, just so I could have a complete MEG set. :slight_smile:

From what I’ve read here, the MEG C does not seem to have as many fans. Both my stock MEG Cs were very prone to overloading. In many respects, they were even worse than stock MEG Ds. The breath sensitivity affected both octaves (especially the squeaky OXXOO natural C) and the low C note seemed to break with the lightest puff of air. Since I ordered two MEG Cs, I was able to tweak one and leave the other untouched for a reference. Here are my findings:

  1. The mouthpiece of the MEG C appears to be the same basic design as that on the MEG D, except that the C mouthpiece is a tad larger to accommodate the wider bore of the C tube. So, as with the MEG Ds from WhistleShop, I began the tweak adventure with beveling the bottom edge of the windway exit.

Instead of using an Xacto knife, I used the blade of a screwdriver - which VomitBunny recommended. Beveling the edge helped strengthen the bottom C, but not as much as this tweak did for the bottom D on the MEG D. The bottom C was still too sensitive for me to play.

  1. Filling the cavity below the windway with poster putty did not reduce the sensitivity and dampened the sound too much for my tastes, so I took it out.

  2. With my sanding board (the one with 600 grit sandpaper), I lightly rubbed it evenly over the edge of the blade a few times - removing an almost imperceptible amount of plastic. The low C note was now much stronger. At first, I thought that this tweak had added hiss to the bottom C, but after comparing it with the other stock MEG C, I realised that the hiss was always there. The tweak had removed the grudge and breakup that was obscuring the hiss in the stock C whistle. Then I beveled the blade edge by sanding at an angle from above and below the blade.

  3. After the sanding in #3, the bottom D note squeaked more than before and was due, I believe, to the roughness on the blade edge caused by the sandpaper. For this tweak, I tried a new technique to polish away the roughness. I dipped a cotton swab in Brasso metal polish and rubbed it vigorously over the blade edge and then rinsed it off. This tweak successfully removed the squeak in the bottom D.

Instead of Brasso (which is good for repairing scratched CDs according to flutemaker Terry McGee), white toothpaste might work as a polish - but I have not tried it. Polishing the blade edge with Brasso even helped reduce the buzz in the low D on my Generation D whistle.

Result: I like the MEG C! I only have music for D whistle, but Yankee Doodle came out just fine (at least to my newbie ears). Now, I’m off to tweak t he other MEG C. If only Clarke would make a low D MEG - I’d buy it. :smiley: