Last Thursday’s mail brought a wonderful package, in the form of a new Paul Busman D+ whistle, which I’d ordered back in January. Having long been enamored of the brilliance of bloodwood, I decided to go with this for the body. The wood used has a little more brown than some other stocks I’ve seen (a friend of mine who builds guitars has a stock that looks like someone painted it), but I’m not sure how realistic my expectation was here. This is wood after all, not painted metal. And make no mistake: this instrument is a honey, both visually and tonally. Intonation is dead perfect, of course, but the low C also gives a perfect cross-fingering for the G# (xxoxxxx, in both the first and second octave), as well as a cross-fingered F (xxxxoxx) that works quite well after you make friends with it. The cross fingered C (oxxoooo) is perfect WRT the low C played in the second octave. And that low C really comes in handy. Tone throughout is even and clear, with just the right “woodiness” to make it sound like the recorder you always wish you had. The top end of the second octave takes a bit more breath than I’m used to from my cheapo Generation, but I’ll get used to it. Indeed, the whistle is a lot more instrument than my playing deserves right now, and that just makes me want to play it more. I’ll get there eventually.
I even got the chance to play it alongside a Copeland D this week. It was amazing to me how different the two instruments sound. The Copeland has a tone like a bell, or the sound you get from running a wet finger around the rim of a crystal wine glass, if you can imagine that being produced by a wind instrument. It’s easily the best-sounding metal whistle I’ve ever heard, and naturally the owner preferred its tone to that of the Busman. But that wood sound is what I wanted out of a whistle, and Paul absolutely delivered. Though the Copeland was amazing, I really prefer this lovely new whistle of my own!
So anyway, thanks, Paul. You do some brilliant work.
Congratulations on the new baby. Paul makes a good whistle. Hope you enjoy it. Do you have a picture you could share with us?
Bloodwood is a very good wood for flutes and whistles. The color when freshly turned can be quite red but in my experience it will darken over time with exposure to light (UV). Maybe it is just my supplier but it seems like recent blanks I have purchased are browner than most of the older blanks I have on the shelf. As you said, timbers will vary quite a bit in color from piece to piece. Some woodworkers say that finishes with UV protectants can delay the darkening. Redheart is another nice choice for a red colored timber.
As soon as I figure out how to upload or link an image. I tried the IMG tags, but got nothing. Perhaps it’s because I tried linking from a Facebook URL (with the privacy protections that implies).
for pics, you can link to a FB album (I assume, i haven’t done it), but Image Shack is really easy to use, and will save your file optimized for a message board, and you don’t need an account.
that’s what i use when selling on the used instrument exchange. http://imageshack.us/
I think I missed the fact that this was Paul’s post. Excellent!
Thanks for the ImageShack tip. I’d still love to know how to embed an image directly in a message (when I tried the img tags, it wouldn’t display anything), but I’ll leave that for another day. In the meantime, let’s try this:
Well, here’s the trick. That URL, even though it
looks like it ends in .jpg, does not just point to
the image. You’ll note that the page at that
URL is more than just the image. When I click
on the above link in Firefox, in fact, the actual
URL shown is :
Page that has the image in it: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/863/img0725u.jpg
Address of the image: http://img863.imageshack.us/img863/6060/img0725u.jpg
Paul does gorgeous looking/sounding things with wood.
One question though. In posting the differences you heard between the Copeland and the Busman and between metal and wood, are you referring to what you hear as you play the respective whistles, or have you recorded yourself on the two whistles and played it back?
I’ve found in the past, I would describe such differences in tone derived from just what I heard whilst playing, but then set to recording various groups (by key, material) of whistles and upon playback most of the differences in tonal quality seemed to disappear.
My impressions were entirely from playing and from hearing the Copeland’s owner play both of them. It will be awhile before I’m confident enough in my own playing to record it!
Got it; thanks. Even better. It’s just difficult to make clinical judgments re tone when you’re listening to yourself play through your own bones, etc. Good that you got to hear someone else play the whistles one after the other. Enjoy that Busman!
