I’ve finally got the better of an old Generation D that has been a stubborn holdout on me. I just couldn’t get that sucker to sweeten up. But tonight I got rid of the raspiness and screechiness. I was putting in the “Frankenwhistle” fipple blade, using a small piece of thin plastic as usual. This was about my 4th effort to get this thing right. I tried putting a slight “V” notch in the edge of the blade where it cuts the air. the V is about 2mm deep and about 3 mm wide, so it’s width is about 1/3rd of the width of the window. Big difference in sound..but is it a coincidence? If some of youse guys try this, let me know how it goes, will ya?
Interesting, but what kind of difference is sound ??
This was a bad whistle that I had tried to improve, but failed. Notching the blade seemed to make it easier to improve. It seemed like the whistle became more “forgiving” as far as positioning of the blade. A good whistle will allow you to adjust the tone and volume by the position of the blade, and it will sound good either way. (Push the blade “back” and you get a round sound with high air requirement, push it upstream and the sound is purer and more sensitive to how hard you blow). A crappy whistle sounds bad no matter how you orient the blade. And when you finally get music from a bad whistle you have to content yourself and glue it where it sounds best. That was how this whistle was. With the notched blade it was easier to get a good sound. I’m not sure this technique would make any difference to the sound a whistle that already sounds very good.