I thought I’d let the pictures and sound samples do all the talking. Overall, the Oz Whistle plays a lot like my current weapon of choice, the wide-bore Humphrey. The only problem I have found so far (after playing for over an hour) is that once warmed-up, the whole whistle is sharp. It’s non-tunable, which makes this kind of a problem when playing with a band. This may be because it was made in Australia, and I live in Oregon. The climates are dramatically different… Anyways, here are some photos and .mp3s for your viewing and listening pleasure (or whatever they may be…).
Just as an exercise - can you tell me how many cents sharp? This would help a lot when tuning for different climates.
I have noticed that nearly all mass-produced whistles avreage about 15-20 cents sharp - a good reason to tweak them.
Big problem with any fixed-tuning whistle is that almost any change in ambient conditions will drive it sharp. Most sessions I attend seem to drift sharp during the evening - which is asomething to accomodate. It becomes something of a trade-off - sharp is not quite as noticeable as flat. That would seem why most fixed-tuned whistles err on the sharp side. Of course, with a wooden whistle, there’s no option for tweeking apart from fixing a bamboo skewer down the length of the bore (this is a bagpiper’s trick - it will flatten the scale at some expense to tonality and volume - one can experiment with shaving the skewer to get the right pitch and it helps to polish it with some fine sandpaper and oil). Really, the only advantage of a non-tunable is that it is way easier to make - therefore less expensive.
Old #7 is a representative of the optimum voicing of the “Vambrace” design. I much prefer to make it as a tunable - and that’s where all my effort has been going these last few months.
Would you like me to add your name to the tunable tour? (more to say about that on the tour thread.)
Many thanks for your review!
(edited to say: Also - thanks for sharing your sound clips - well played!)
Thanks for responding, Mitch. Sorry I didn’t write too much, but I just wanted people to know about the whistle more than give my opinion.
But, I’ll tell you some more. The whistle was just about 20 cents sharp, but I don’t know too much about cents. Though the whistle was overall sharp, the tuning was consistent. Keep in mind that it’s been really cold and wet here, and the house I live in has been pretty cold, so that’s the climate here.
I really really like the Oz whistle. It plays great, the wood feels nice in the hands, the craftsmanship is excellent, and it looks wonderful. My mom has heard many whistles, but when I played this whistle my mom said it sounded great, and her Irish friend commented favorably as well. It played very smooth for me. Also, my main whistle has slight clogging issues, when the Oz whistle never clogged on me while I played for about an hour straight. Some moisture blew out at one point, but not in the middle of a tune.
If I knew that the whistle would be more in tune, I would buy one, no question. That makes me really interested in the tunable one, and I would love to be on the tour list! Mitch, how many tunable whistles have you made?
Thanks for the tour. It’s excellent in my opinion, and I could foresee an Oz whistle being my main weapon.
hmmm … 20 cents is a little more than what I recorded for #7 - which was about 10.
Still - just about any Gen, Feadog or Meg reads around that (before tweekery).
I love working on the tunables - I’ve made about 50 so far and improving the workshop to arrive at the optimum result every time. It’s a thing I didn’t expect when I started-out (about 3 years ago). It took around 6 months of research to arrive at a design - but the execution is is long a road as learing how to play the things. One gets sweapt-up by the technology and it’s mesmerising as you pass through all the “what-ifs” geting the tooling and materials right, setting a standard and finding ways to stick to it. Mostly the inovations get done by hand and take altogether too long - as time progresses, I find ways to incorporate things efficiently - but the result is king, many sad failures litter my bench, each with a small lesson in what works and what doesn’t.
There’s a thing my father used to say about the nature of “doing stuff”. He said - “Show the world where you are going and the world will clear the way.”.
This is so true - when I had put in the time to get as far as I could by myself, doors began to open for each next step - I met Ian Mackenzie - who is a world-class luthier making uilleann pipes (and any other kind of bagpipe you can name) - as it turned-out, he lives not far from here. Without Ian, I could not have the slightest clue about the practicalities of how to get a design into the material world! With his help, I got my workshop tooled-up with some understanding of what is needed to get a result. This included moving-house to get enough space to work. Here’s how dedication gives us energy and moves us to where we need to be.
From there, it’s step-by-step - it’s not an easy thing, but with the help of the members of this board, I can feel things going right.
I hope this is true for all the other makers here - more whistles and more passion, in my book, is the way to keeping this beautiful little instrument as an open doorway for people to enter the magic door to music.
We each have our little light to shed - together it puts the humble whistle into the daylight it deserves.
I think I’ll keep doing this I hope that I can continue to make whistles worthy of the great people who play them!
I was probably giving the whistle too much air, but I am used to playing wide-bore whistles. Your whistles are excellent, and I am thinking about one of the tunable whistles.
By the way, what’s the difference between the woods you use? I looked on your site, and the names are not familiar to me, which is cool, but you maybe have some info on the woods? I’m just curious is all…
The woods I use are really a matter of what’s available for each batch. #7 is made of Rose-Alder, which is a nice close-grained hardwood, but fairly light - has a sweet sound, other wood that i use include: Tasmanian-blackwood, this is heavier and produces a darker sound, but can have an openness to the grain that needs sealing, gidgee is heavy and very tough - even though the gran can be a bit open, it is waxy and self-sealing, African blackwood is usually the wet-woodwind timber of choice because it is waxy, hard, stable, produces a classic tone and is a pleasure to work, unfortunately, it is becoming rare and expensive.
A lot of the wood I get is recovered - good local hardwoods often get pillaged to make decking and doorframes until all the wild forest stock is gone - tallow-wood is one of these, Kwila is heading in the same direction. I like tallow-wood for its nice color - the sound is quite powerful, I like using Kwila because of the deep striation in the grain and brittle sound, both these take a lot of finishing, but worth the effort. I have a lot of other local woods that will get used over the next few months - no idea how they will turn out. There’s some river oak, Queensland walnut, wenge, purpleheart, mahogany, and a few bits of unidentified stuff - gums and the like.
Each wood has its own character - some of it will not be useful for whistles. The character asserts itself mostly in the working, but each will result in a certain character-range, I give them subjective names - gidgee is “cheeky”, African blackwood is “noble”, tas blackwood is “dark”, tallow-wood is “strong”, delrin is “competant”, rose-alder is “sweet”. It’s fun getting to know them.
I hope that I can continue to make whistles worthy of the great people who play them!