Obviously what Brigitte has said is quite true and I do think we tend to forget that these whistles are (essentially) made as toys, hence the price. I mean really, these “Instruments” are not being turned out at these prices with the intent that musicians making their livelihood will be the source of sales…
With that in mind, we shouldn’t expect much from the cheapies: I’m willing to bet that most are essentially drilled with the tone holes in the intended places and so the main problems with inconsistent tuning tend to have with head placement on the tube, which is really quite simple to rectify at home - just move the head until the instrument is mostly in-tune with itself.
The plastic headjoints can be a bit a nuisance because they are cranked out with no hand voicing, but then that’s what you get for barely any money, and typically they do work well enough for a few bucks, Euros, whatever. If you want better, tweak it or buy a tweaked one, to be sure. Overall though, I really don’t think they are as inconsistent as people tend to say, once the heajoint is moved to the proper place on the tube.
That being the case (at least as I see it), it seems to me that cheap whistles are an amazing value, which brings me back to Peters point: To spend 10 or 20 times times as much for an instrument that has serious tuning, function, or other flaws seems outrageous. But it happens because so many people go “Ah! It’s just a tube with 6 holes, I can make those!!” And then here come the poorly made, poorly tuned whistles, often constructed of unseasoned or improperly seasoned wood, by folks who have had no training and more often than not haven’t even been playing for long. To make matters worse, often they have no business experience either, which can lead to additional problems.
However, as I mentioned before, the market doesn’t seem to mind, so Peter, there are going to be precious few of us who really care.
Hm, since the phrase with horse is so favourite, I thought those pictures could come handy (especially the smiley) - it´similar to that lovely can of worms (which I already downloaded on harddisk )
Yeah, sorry, I’ve now combined sentiments from 2 threads, my bad. Shall combine yet another and touch on the silliness of your “professional whistle” thread as well?
Ugh, really, we’ve been through all of this so many times, I can’t believe I got drawn in.
Off to kick myself now for the wasted time. No more dead horse flogging for me this month.
I think the question was which whistle is the best to mail order. From what I have read it seems to be Oak or Feadog. I picked the Oak. Neither need a hot water bath to adjust the head and both are consistent from what I have heard. I think any warranty of the generation whistles would be voided by tampering with the glue, so I stayed away(they should not be tampered with).
I am thinking of buying my mother-in-law a whistle for Christmas, so I am looking for a consistently good, if only average whistle. I think Feadog and perhaps Oak.
I was more curious in how the mass-produced whistles are made. I had envisaged a highly technical clean-room atmosphere in a nuclear proof bunker with NASA built robots carefully drilling holes, filing fipples and playing slip-jigs
You are entitled to your opinion, Peter, but I disagree.
Jerry’s tweaked Gens capture what is good about
Gens, IMO, they have the quality that most
of us who buy gens looking for a good one are after.
Also they remind me of
the Gens I used to play back in the early 80s,
which are often said to be superior to those
made today. I think people wanting a good Gen who haven’t access
to lots of them would do well to try one of
Jerry’s.
I’m going to lock this thread, aware that it makes it necessary to give someone the last word, but in the case it’s just timing.
This issue will not be resolved on this forum and I just can’t see anything else of use being said about it. In any event, that needs to be it for now.
)
