I play a whistle at a living History museum here in Wichita ks called CowTown, it shows what life was like here in Ks in the 1870s.
My Shaw whistle has just the right old time look to it that it just blends in to the environment, plus they have a great sound.
I am experiencing two problems with my whistle:
A) It glogs very, very easily, I can only get thru a few measures before it quits playing, then I have to suck in hard to unclear it, and many of our guests don’t seem to care for me doing that.
B) It won’t play anything in the higher register, once I get past 2oct D it again quits playing.
I have higher end whistles I could use, but they just don’t have the right look or sound the museum would like.
Any help would be of great assistance.
thangbrand.
How abut an old-style Burke Wide-bore brass? It’s all brass on the outside, you could probably chemically accelerate the formation of a patina on it, too.
I’m impressed. I can clog a whistle at 20 yards just by thinking about a tune. I even have problems with condensation in wooden flutes. But I’ve owned three Shaws and never had a clogging problem with any of them.
Sighting through the mouth end of the whistle, check the position of the soundblade relative to the floor of the windway. It may be that the soundblade has gotten out of position.
The best configuration for a Shaw soundblade is to make it the same shape as the windway floor and positioned so you can see 1/32 inch or so of daylight under the blade all the way along from one side of the soundblade to the other. If the whistle doesn’t play the upper notes, or if it doesn’t flip cleanly up into the upper register, experiment with adjusting the soundblade edge up or down slightly so it reveals a little more (usually) or less (sometimes) daylight under the soundblade.
I believe you will be able to get your Shaw to play cleanly and predictably all the way to the top notes of the upper register with this adjustment.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Jerry may be right. You might also wnat to see if sharpening the blade a bit helps the upper register. Try warming the Whistle in your hands before you play it.
I’ve done about a thousand of these. Yes, I may be right.
Best wishes,
Jerry
I never said you weren’t. I meant mine as something that you could have forgotten. I was not suggesting that I know more about this subject than you.
That’s about a thousand tweaked Shaws. I’ve done about five thousand or so tweaked whistles in all.
Another aspect that might affect the behaviors Thangbrand’s describing would be if the windway ceiling had gotten squished down a bit and had become too narrow where the windsheet spills into the voicing window area. The windway ceiling may need to be pried up a little if it’s too low, although this more often causes the bottom two notes to buzz or fail to speak, rather than interfere with the upper register. If the windway ceiling at the voicing window is too high, the whistle will be more breathy (more nonmusical air noises). If it’s too low, the bottom notes will buzz or refuse to speak. If it’s just right (and the soundblade is optimally positioned), the voicing will be focused and confident sounding, with the minimum (for that whistle) amount of breathiness.
Sharpening the soundblade can make the upper register play with a little more focus and slightly less breathy, but it’s not likely to be the reason the whistle’s presenting these specific problems. Again, the single factor that most directly plays into the kind of behaviors Thangbrand is describing is the position of the soundblade relative to the windway floor.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Hmmm, this might not work for you, but I did read somewhere that someone put wood-grain contact paper on a high-end whistle to make it look renaissance-y.
Thanks for the advice on how to get my whistle playing, i’m sure it will work. This is my second Shaw, the first was wonderful, and I would still be using it had it not met it’s end under the heavy step of a cowboy boot.
The Shaw i’m using now I got new last year and it has givin me problems right from the begining, I will try my best to tweak the whistle and get it to play as beautiful as my recently departed Shaw.
Thangbrand
Where are my manners? The arrival of new Kansas whistler, and I almost missed it altogether. Welcome, thangbrand. There are pert near half a dozen of us now, maybe even more than there are from Oklahoma.
Just so’s you’ll know – We like to create the impression that Kansas today is pretty much just like Kansas in 1870 – horses, Indian attacks, no running water, a dearth of soap in the rainy season because the wagon trains can’t get through, cholera, and most important – tornadoes every day. We do not want these people (good and kind thought they may be) to move here and run up our property values and insurance rates.
Gotta run. A bunch of us are heading down to the gas station. Eddie left the compressor on again, and we’re gonna stomp on the hose and listen to it ring.
Try an unpainted Clarke,they are fairly inexpensive.
Shudder!
Contact paper is really killer to try to remove. If you want a wood grain appearance, there’s really only one way to go… 
The Shaw really oughta do the trick with some tweaking.
Wood-grained contact paper doesn’t even look good in the bottom of a dresser drawer! 