My lovely daughter gave me nice Shaw high D whistle as a Mother’s Day gift. It has a nice mellow sound and I love it–except for the high A and B. I can usually get the A to come out OK, but it’s almost impossible to get a decent high B out of it. On my other whistles I’ve managed a respectable high B most of the time, but none of the methods I’ve used seem to work with this one. Does anyone have any thoughts about how to tweak it to help?
Years ago I bought a Shaw A from -VENDOR NAME CENSORED - which arrived egregiously out of temper; I found molding the blade down into a uniformly concave (u-shape) with a rubber eraser most efficacious. I experimented with the lowest clearance, and had to start over many times, using a wooden coffee stirring stick to raise up the blade if I overshot. After much patience, blowing & tweaking I achieved a remarkably good two octaves.
Raymond has the right idea. The position and shape of the soundblade need to be adjusted. I’ve found that the best shape is for the soundblade to follow the shape of the windway floor and be positioned so there’s about a millimeter of daylight visible under the soundblade. If the top two notes still won’t play, experiment with raising the soundblade (more daylight visible under, which more often corrects the problem) or lowering the soundblade (sometimes corrects the problem). Sometimes, the windway roof where the windsheet exits the windway has gotten pressed down too low and needs to be raised a little.
You should be able to get the result you’re looking for by experimenting with different shapes and positions of the soundblade (mainly) and the windway roof (sometimes needed).
Best wishes,
Jerry
Exactly what I was hoping for! (Though I’ll admit I didn’t expect Jerry Freeman to weigh in himself.) Many thanks!!! I’ll give it a try.
Jerry,
last week I ordered and got a Shaw alto G direct from Dave. I’m very happy with this instrument and even like it’s breathiness in the lower register but IF (!! depends on further exercising and coming quiet clear with the higher registers or not ) I come one day in the far future to that point the others came also: would this method (1mm under the soundblade) work for this G-tuned whistle too?
On the other hand side I’m afraid to twiddle on ones handcraft.
Regards
Ayup.
This kind of adjustment is completely reversable, so there’s not much to worry about.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Thanks, Jerry,
by now I’m happy with the sound and could get into second octave with much overblowing. We’ll see. For now I’m more involved in fingering especially the lowest hole 