See BH’s post. I posted something along the same lines several threads ago. Every whistle that I’ve ever owned required some adaptation on my part. Moreover, my perceptions about the quality and playability of a whistle, cheap or expensive, often change. You get conditioned to one but then deconditioned to another. There is no such thing as a perfect whistle, only a better fit, for that point in time.
What if all the tracks played just fine but you found some of the songs were not to your liking? Most whistles play all the notes, just some notes (or note transitions) are not as nice and easy. I bought a red-top brass Gen D online recently. Total crap shoot but nonetheless it played quite well. Go figure.
Surely you overestimate my influence. And I’ve made certain confessions already about my contributions to some whistle mythology I made when I was a young man who, by accident of timing and an apparently popular writing style, found myself in a really, really unlikely position in Whistle World. Having made that confession, maybe you could cut me some slack.
That Gens have some issues may be debatable. It may not be true, even. But it’s not nonsense, nor is it a rumor that I started.
I sat alone in a room once with Paddy Moloney who, told me of his preference for Generations that you have to look for good ones and often have to tweak the ones you find. He said something about how Mary Bergin had “found” some good ones for him.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t read that in Chiff & Fipple. He had no idea who I was. The interview had been arranged by intermediaries.
That Paddy had that belief doesn’t mean it’s the Gospel, but I’d like to think that it reduces the chances that the idea of quality control problems is “nonsense.”
For those unable to pick and choose from a local store with lots of whistles and who are unwilling to buy 10 or 12 whistles in hopes of getting a good one, let me propose this intermediate solution:
Order five cheap whistles of the brand you like. While awaiting delivery, read all the old threads about simple tweaks to cheapies. When the whistles arrive, pull the heads, clean out the stray plastic, clean everything up and put them all back together. Spend a week or so happily tooting into a tuner, messing with heads, carving out holes, taping over holes, etc, etc. Figure out which head on which tube sounds best to you, throw the rest in a deep drawer and enjoy your new whistle. You have paid $10 for a $20 whistle and $40 for a priceless education. Not a bad deal.
N.B. For the same $50, you can get an even better tweaked whistle but you miss out on the education. Your call.
I don’t think you need to defend what you said Dale, I merely said that once you made your statement, it seems to keep popping up over and over (the use of the phrasing of ‘Quality control issues’ seems to indicate the re-hash) and seems to have become a by-word when it comes to Generations. It has taken on a life of it’s own.
I also indicated that the meaning has shifted, that the statement has taken on the meaning of finding a playable one, any one at all while Mary B and Paddy M are looking for something a bit beyond the merely playable. I have said before that I fully agree that not all Generations are equal but I have indicated in the past that those who think ALL Generations are horrible won’t find solace in the ones Moloney called ‘good ones’ .
For the record, it seems to me that very few, if any Generations are unplayable, and if I’ve said that, I was either a poor choice of words or i was just in error. But, I do think there are reasons to suspect quality control issues among Generations. I should preface by saying that it’s been a long time since I’ve played large numbers and wide ranges of inexpensive whistles of the same brand. I have a dozen or so Susatos around here, and differences among them are, at most, very subtle. Got a bunch of those Little Black Whistles and variants (the orange ones) and don’t find much variability at all. I do think there’s some variability among the Clarkes, but I’ve never had the experience with Clarkes I’ve had with Generations – picking it up and playing and saying, Yeah, well, don’t particularly want to play that again.
But, again, I don’t think I’ve played a new Generation for three or four years. Maybe things are different and maybe I am.
I don’t think you said that but somehow it has become an opinion that is brought forward again and again by some.
Nobody will deny there’s variance in their output and a few of the really exceptional ones are probably quirks (I have posted a picture of Brid’s crooked one). I can’t say if it’s quality control or just a result of their production process but I think their average whistle is serviceable enough to play away happily on.
Qualilty control on so called “entry-level whistles”
What price range are we talking here? 3 Euros or 50 Euros? From which price range on do you think you have a right of a final product test to have a perfectly fine instrument?
I am not sure how much Generation whistles cost, in Germany probably about 10 Euros, I would guess, I know what a Clarkes Sweetone costs which is about the same or less. For 10 Euros you get a crade of beer, 3-4 loafs of bread or 10 eggs. I expect the beer to taste in each bottle which is very much likely due to the making process, I expect the bread to taste good but I cannot expect it being exactly the same shape as the next bread and the eggs should have no broken shell but the inside it totally up to the chicken which laid it…
For a 10 Euro whistle you can expect that if you blow into it that something comes out that reminds you more or less accurate of the notes in the key you bought… if you wanted these whistles to be perfectly accurate and tonal qualities flawless, you need to pay someone skilled enough to play them after they are made and to do the necessary adjustments to tuning/voicing. The person doing this deserves a wage. If a company can knock out 1000 instruments a day, how many people would you need additionally to the existing staff to do this kind of work without delaying the daily productions… how much health insurance, pension, sickleave, workspace you need to supply to house these employees… you get the picture… So either you save this part of the manufacturing process and accept an DOA-rate of what 5% or so or you have to deal with the additional costs, raise the prices and possibly loose the market share you are aiming for in the first place.
About Clarke Sweetones… we buy every year one pack of these or the Megs even from Clarke’s, people who attend a whistle workshop Colin gives in summer, each will receive one of these to have an instrument for the workshop, also Colin plays on them during this workshop so that everyone has the same position. This works perfectly fine… the rest of the pack we give away over the course of the year to kids who come and ask for a whistle or other people who want one.
You get what you pay for. Somthing that can never be 100% identical either needs a quality control to make sure it is acceptable or you accept that not each is “perfect”. If you expect quality control and with a wind instrument this is nearly impossible to not have a human being involved, you have to pay that human being a decent vage which will add ultimately to the product price. So if you buy a “tweaked Generation” from one of the makers we have in the community this is the difference you have to expect to pay in price if you would buy a Generation off the shelve in the future… and I am not saying that our “tweakers” are closely paid a decent income…
That makes sense. Generations are around €4 or 5 here. At this point you hardly get a sandwich at your local coffeeshop for that. Or three litres of petrol.
Y’know, this is one of the things I love about whistles, and about Generations in particular.
There’s something magical about an instrument that’s mass produced and cheap, gets mistaken for a toy by the uninitiated but can produce the most exquisite music in knowing hands, and where each individual instrument, by some cosmic accident of injection molding and history can have its own identity, and it’s up to the musician to find an example that suits them, and possibly, to find an exceptional instrument they’ll treasure as long as they own it.
Jerry Freeman’s tweaked Gens are the solution to your problem.
These are what a good Gen is (and what Gens often used to be).
An extraordinary value, in fact.
Forgodsake Jim will you give it a rest. They are what they are, they’re fine in their own right but they are nowhere like a Generation is or was, they are in fact very different. Another of those myths that keeps coming back.
Back to my original set of questions. I know that Guinness attempted to answer them, but his comments are rather more like soundbites than answers - I do know that quality is subjective while tolerances are measurable, but you didn’t answer the question.
So, has anyone visited a large scale whistle factory? If so, how are they made? Is modern laser controlled drilling of tone holes performed, etc., etc. In other words, why can’t a tube be drilled sufficiently accurately to be well in tune and fipples be mold injected to not require tweaking in an mass-production setting?
Incidentally, there are some things that a craftsman can do extremely well as opposed to a machine, but that is not always the case. For example, my classical guitar is a spanish handmade instrument made from 30 yr seasoned wood. However, I expect (hope) that the cutting for the frets was done by machine as these are crucial for tunability. I have never asked the manufacturer, but it is in tune all the way along the neck.
I also expect that playing a ‘low-end’ or cheap whistle very well must give a great sense of pride, not because it is necessarily more difficult, but because (for me at least), it would feel great to show the person next to me what I can play compared to them on their “boutique” whistles. Not that I am competitive, but I may feel a little smug about it! When I used to rock-climb, I used to get a great kick out of doing some scary technical climbs in old, worn out footwear and with out-dated gear. I never boasted, but it felt good inside.
I very much doubt any serious musician would entertain that motive. Like all musicians, traditional musicians look for the tool best suited for the job. That’s the reason why Sindts are popular: they fit the aesthetic.
