OK, after reading reviews and posts on this site, I decided to buy myself another Feadog. Some may have seen my post where I said that a Feadog I owned had been consigned to the garage because it was the worst whistle I’d ever played. So, the model I bought was the nickel tubed blue mouthpiece one. The first thing I noticed was how sharp the end of the tube was, and the tone holes also. Because a previous poster had noted how he’d found Feadogs to be consistently in tune, I decided to test this with Flutini. Sure enough it proved to be the most accurately in tune whistle I have. This latter statement was true after I reduced the amount of pressure on all notes up the scale. In other words I was initially blowing too hard! I then tried playing a couple of simple tunes, and found that I was going to have to make a conscious effort to move from certain notes in the second register. I’m not competent to give a more accurate and useful review of this whistle, other than to say I think it will repay more practice.
Cheers
Max
I just purchased a Feadog Pro myself. Unfortunately, we are not getting along well.
On another subject, I read your post about Flutini and started to wonder what that was. I found the application online and read about the program and downloaded it. After reading about it I thought it sounded “VERY BENEFICIAL”. When I attempt to get my whistles in tune I use a tuner to do this (Ipad App). I’ve discovered what I do naturally does not reflect exactly what I do when I am sitting in front of tuner. To offset this I just leave my tuner on and start playing. Then I will divert my eyes and let things happen. Then every once in awhile I will glance at the tuner (as if to catch it off guard or something of nature I suppose). Needless to say, my old system is far from an kind of an exact science.
This should help me. In a round about way, thanks for bringing Flutini to my attention. It certainly cant be any worse then my old system.
I just purchased a Feadog Pro myself. Unfortunately, we are not getting along well.
After Marshman’s outburst a few days ago I ordered a Black Pro in, just to see if a randomly bought new one would challenge my own thought Feadógs are fine whistles (and because Sunday was a miserable, slow day). Feadógs do challenge my notion that backfilling the cavity doesn’t do anything for a whistle: it does smooth out the second octave in them. That done, I can’t really find fault. The black has a nice feeling of novelty about it too.
“I have to say I think you were very lucky with the Feadog, as the one I bought a few years ago is without question the worst whistle I have. It’s been consigned to a box in the garage somewhere!
Max”
You consider the above a RANT! I simply consider it a statement of fact. If I was to rant, it would go on considerably longer than that, and almost certainly contain a few expletives.
The beauty of Flutini is, that you can play a tune of any length and Flutini will continue to analyse and progressively update the in or out of tuneness of your instrument.
We are very used to hearing the tales of out of tune whistles here. And yet the whistles in question are many times well regarded by players over their long years in the marketplace.
So I would just like to add a thought here. Take it or leave it, as you like. We play the whistles. The whistles do not play us. A whistle is not a piano. Pitch is effected by breath pressure, by how we play. It is up to us to play the whistle in tune. Flutini just documents our performance. Sure if a whistle is hopelessly out of tune then it will be reflected in Flutini. But …
Feadoggie
For sure this is true. When I first started getting into Irish flute back in the 70s a wise older fluteplayer told me “just buy a flute and keep playing it”. Of course back then we didn’t have Pakistani flutes on the market, so any flute I would buy would be a decent one. His point was that my embouchure would adapt to my own flute’s particular needs, given sufficient “face time”.
And, a professional tuba player told me “the perfect wind instrument can never be made” the point being that playing in tune was up to the player.
So, a skilled player with a good ear for playing in tune can force pretty much any wind instrument into tune. I don’t know how many times I’ve been in a recording studio or orchestra pit and there’s a legit/non-trad “reed man” there (sax/clarinet/Boehm flute) who has some whistles, and he plays one of them right in tune on a piece, but afterwards when we start talking whistles I find out that it’s a cheap off-the-shelf whistle with bad tuning.
Thing is, I don’t have perfect pitch (like these guys) and I don’t want to work that hard, or have to think that much, to force a bad whistle into tune. I either buy whistles that are pretty much perfect as they come, or I modify them to be so. With my old Feadog (MK1 c1980) I carved the F# hole a bit, and maybe the B hole, I don’t remember, but the whole scale is very good.
With a couple Generation D’s the only thing I had to do was carve out the F# hole.
Wow, I’m pleased with discovering Flutini, thank you (I’m also reassured by my results across various instruments, although my fife has a bit of an anomoly on the 2nd octave E that I need to do some work on).
I couldn’t get it to run straight off (Windows 8.1 fully patched), but right-clicking the EXE gives a link to the Compatibility Tool, which automatically suggested Vista emulation and that worked fine. I then agreed to the suggestion that I saved that setting for future use, and sure enough Flutini now works without any further complaint.
I had two Generation High D’s few years back and remember they were both not in-tune and especially the tuning between those two had quite a noticeable difference. A bit later I got a Feadóg whistle which was way better, good to play and the sound was nicer, only a bit high so I had to tune it down when playing with others.
Feadog makes a very good whistle. I have found that they have a tapered wind way being small at the exit. I think this makes for a steady stream of air to the blade.
The exit on Generation whistles vary so much it is sometimes visible and no measuring is needed.
I don’t know if Feadog is designed that way or made that way for easier removal from the mold.
Susatoe also has a tapered wind way and some high end whistles too.