OK, so I have a Burke brass pro in D and I like it a lot. (That’s the stock part of the subject, to catch your eye. Did it work? Read on…)
How do the tweeked whistles stack up in comparison? I’m thinking Freeman’s Generation, Sweetone, Shaw and Cillian O’Briain’s Feadog.
I’m tossing around the idea of picking one up and wanted some feedback.
Thanks in advance.
Jerry’s Generation and Cillian’s Generation and Feadog are fine whistles. Which one you prefer is as always a matter of individual preference and a matter of which one you selected from the box.
Personally, I would get Generation and tweak it myself. There are great instructions at the Chiff and Fipple site and the total cost is less than one tweaked whistle. All it takes is a little poster putty, an hobby knife, 600 grit paper, a bee’s wax candle, and a Generation Whistle. Do not use the one you like to play but buy another just in case… I found the results to be fantastic and now I have a tunable whistle.
(The hardest thing to find was a bee’s wax candle. Found one at a local Wiccan shop!)
I dunno. I’ve tried to tweak two Gen D’s and they’ve come out much worse for the experience 
Are there instructions around for tweaking Faedogs? I like them better anyway.
[quote=“Kuranes”]I dunno. I’ve tried to tweak two Gen D’s and they’ve come out much worse for the experience
Are there instructions around for tweaking Faedogs? I like them better anyway.[/quote]
Sorry to hear that you were not successful. I have tweaked Generation D, C, and F whistles with no problems. Maybe just luck!
If you do find directions on tweaking a Feadog, please mention them here, I would be very interested.
If you’ve already tweaked whistles and like what you have, sounds like you can stop there. I have tweaked Generations into worthlessness, so that’s not an option for me.
I have several Feadogs from over the years. Most are very raspy sounding in an annoying way. If a tweaking frenzy comes over me, they’ll be the victims. I have one old one that’s very soft and quiet.
I have a Jerry Freeman and a Cillian O’Briain. Night and day: the O’Briain is very, very pure sounding- no breathiness. Takes a very light breath pressure with little tolerance for blowing hard.
Jerry’s, to me, is the perfect Generation. The more I play it, the more I like it. (love it.) It’s as close as you can get to the old Chieftains recordings, which set the standard for whistle sound for me. Just a touch of breathiness, raspiness, chirpiness. You can make it sound rough or smooth. I sent Jerry my 1976 Generation and asked him to approximate that sound. He did and eliminated the instabilities the old one has. His tweaked one is more stable and a little louder in the lower octave. Breath requirements are perfect for me. (I don’t run out of breath to soon and get light headed or feel oxygen deprived like I’m holding my breath too long- some whistles do that to you.)
Tony
I have tweaked a number of Generations, Feadog, Clarke original, and Oak. The last one to destruction. A white cap will fix that. Most of these I tweaked before I learned decent breath control, etc. Now I wish I had not touched some of them. Some of my untweaked Gens sound better now than the ones I tweaked. I have a Little Black whistle that I didn’t think was playable. I resisted the urge to tweak it and instead spent time learning to play it the way it was. It sounds great now. I find that if I spend a little time selecting a whistle that I think will play well, it usually does. You don’t have to play it to do this. Jerry’s Gens are modified to be exactly what I am looking for when I examine a whistle. His tweak on the Gens is not the simple tweaks shown on the site. I guess I am saying make sure it is the whistle that needs tweaking.
Keep whistling and tweak your fipple
Ron
The only tweaked whistle I can compare to a Burke is the Jerry-tweaked Gen, but I have a full set including two D tubes and three heads. I’d agree with Peter that each one is an individual and you might like one much better than another, but I’d add that the same is true of highenders like Burkes. You won’t get a Burke that’s squeaky or otherwise unplayable, at least not in my experience, but you might get one that’s relatively unresponsive or ‘flat’. I mean flat in presence, not in intonation. Some of Jerry’s Gens are perfectly well behaved straight away, others squeak a bit until you get used to them but none squeak uncontrollably—not like some I’ve bought straight out of the box. IMO, a good Jerry-tweaked Gen, ie, one that fits your picture of what a Gen ought to sound like and feels comfortable, is every bit as good as a Burke, but a Burke simply doesn’t sound like a Gen so it really depends on what sound you are after.
I think you should try any whistle before buying.
Jerry sent me a batch of whistles to try and they were all quite different, the later Generation ones were quite nice but I would also say they are very different in character from the old Generations and I am not the only one to think that.
FWIW I have never encountered a Generation that was unplayable or squeaky. They may be raspy or less pleasant and you would discard them for that reason. But I don’t think Jerry particularly tweaks to address that problem [or not to address it completely], some of the prototype whistles I received were particualrly raspy or croaky and sounded just like a cheap whistle that I would have rejected for that reason.
I think it’s crucial to let Jerry know what you are looking for in a tweak so he can work to suit.
I tried tweaking my Feadog, didn’t like it, and went to a Whitecap. Now it’s great.
I got a new Oak and tried re-tweaking the Feadog head for that–still no good. The original Oak, though not perfect, is better.
I don’t plan to waste any more time on self-tweaking. I’d go to Jerry, for sure–especially with Mack not taking any more orders till July.
Actually, now you mention it, it’s right that the problem with a bad untweaked Gen is raspiness not squeakiness. My Jerry-tweaked Gens vary a bit in raspiness but none is raspy in a way I find unpleasant. Probably the squeakiness is just a matter of getting used to a new instrument. Until recently, I rarely played Gens so the holes don’t always just fall under my fingers as they would with an instrument I’m thoroughly at home with.
Not everyone gets the opportunity to cherry pick new Gens. I have a very raspy Eb which I used to think of as unplayable. But practice with it allowed me to control it most of the time. But why bother? You shouldn’t have to work at taming a whistle if you can pick one up that sings more or less straight away. It’s hard enough to sound good without putting an extra problem between you and the music.
I agree you shouldn’t bother with croaky or unclear whistles. But I also think it’s a bit of a myth that the tweaked whistles solve all problems. That’s why I think you need to pick a good cleansounding one out of a batch of any make, or at least one that suits you. O Briains need to be picked too as they are not all the same. The first Gen Jerry sent me was quite raspy and the second isn’t completely free of it either, neither is a Feadog he sent me [and I won’t play that one for that reason, it’s just not a nice whistle, coarse sounding]. And for untweaked ones: we have a young girl in town who has a particularly croaky Sindt, there are buzzy Oaks around, the list is endless. So really you need to try before you buy and get something you will want to play.
That’s right Peter. Even the most expensive whistles can have serious problems. One well-known expensive brand is given to intonation problems and sudden volume jumps at the top of the second octave, but if you get one without these problems it’s usually a great whistle. Now someone who was fussy might call that kind of whistle ‘unplayable’ meaning that they would never touch it if they had a whistle without those problems. You could probably learn to blow the notes into tune and to adjust the volume with breath control and other tricks to lessen the shrillness, but that would be hard for a beginner and would be encouraging, not so much bad habits, but unnecessary caution that isn’t helpful in playing the music. Me, I just reach for another whistle.
I’ve played guitars for nearly 40 years and, even when I was playing semi-professionally, there were guitars which I regarded as pretty much unplayable because I couldn’t get the sound I wanted from them no matter what I did or I had to struggle with the action. After maybe 10 or 15 years of playing I reached a point where I could play just about any guitar. This is I suppose the stage you reach where a string can break in mid performance and you can finish the piece without stopping or even thinking hard. I think that’s not just pure technical proficiency but partly having lived with an instrument for a very long time. I’d never recommend trying to learn on a bad instrument. And although I can play ‘unplayable’ guitars now, I’d never choose to. I actually think that it did my playing a lot of good to struggle with a guitar on which I couldn’t play quickly and on which I had to work to get good tone—I had to think much harder about timing and groove and swing as a substitute for flash. But that is not for beginners or even intermediates.
Thanks, all, for your comments, including the critical ones.
I must say, Peter’s input has been profoundly helpful in the evolution of the tweaked Generations, as has the input of several other seasoned whistlers.
The issue with raspiness is one I have control of. The tweaked Generations both Peter and Wombat are describing as raspy are earlier prototypes, and they are voiced differently from the whistles I’m producing now.
The Generations I’m producing now are similar to the last one I sent Peter (the bluetop), and to the new ones I included when I retweaked Wombat’s whistles to bring them up to date with the recent tweaking developments.
Because different voicings may be suited for different moods or situations, I chose not to replace two of the earlier whistles in Wombat’s set when I retweaked them for him, but rather, to send them back to him along with new whistles in Eb and D that were tweaked using the current scheme. So Wombat and Peter both have examples of tweaked Generations of more than one voicing.
I have one customer, quite a well known and respected whistler, who is extremely fond of the version of the whistle that’s too raspy for Peter’s taste, and plays it in performances with his band regularly. This whistle is now something of a collector’s item, since it was a prototype that is no longer being produced.
I’ve had occasion now, thanks to Tony and others, to study several vintage Generation whistles in all keys, and evaluate the differences in voicing between the pre-1980’s Generations and the ones now being produced.
The major difference I can determine, is that the pre-1980’s Generations are somewhat sweeter/purer (less raspy) in timbre than the current ones, along with tending to be less temperamental in terms of buzzes, rattles and squawks.
I’ve been able to determine what aspects of the whistlehead design are responsible for the difference in timbre, and I’ve been able to develop a tweaking scheme for tweaked Generations with a timbre that closely matches that of the vintage Generations. This is not a random thing, but something I have precise control of.
There will be some variation among the tweaked Generations, but that variation is less than the variation I’ve observed in my sampling of the vintage Generations themselves. In other words, among a batch of tweaked Generations, all voiced to match the pre-1980’s Generations, you could expect to find them to be very similar among the whole group, although not identical.
There are other aspects than what I’m calling the timbre, of the tweaked Generations’ dynamics and sound that may be more different from the vintage Generations, or indeed, from current factory run Generations and Generation type whistles in general.
In particular, there may be some differences in response, loudness, and chiff comparing the tweaked Generations with factory run whistles. These differences are the result of the work that’s been done to create a degree of playability in the whistles that a majority of whistlers will be happy with.
It’s been very interesting, indeed, getting feedback from large numbers of whistlers of varying levels of skill and experience, and wrestling with their differences in priorities in a whistle’s performance.
For some of the more advanced whistlers, playability tends to be less of a concern, and the matter of having to match breath output closely to the requirements of each note seems to have become virtually automatic, and no trouble at all.
However, for many whistlers, the additional dimension of having to stay within a more restricted range of breath control to avoid over or underblowing a sensitive note is bothersome, and I’ve found that the largest number of people seem to appreciate the ease of play of the tweaked Generations.
Having said that, I do appreciate what Peter’s saying when he tells us he hasn’t yet encountered an unplayable Generation. I sent him a factory run whistle I thought to be very temperamental, and he emailed me a lovely clip of him playing it beautifully, clearly with no extra effort at all, and demonstrating qualities in the untweaked whistle that I needed to be aware of and carefully preserve in developing the tweaking scheme.
The playability aspect is especially relevant in regard to Cillian O’Briain’s tweaked Generation/Feadog whistles. He has voiced them to be extremely pure/sweet sounding, and wonderfully so, in my opinion. A tradeoff he’s consciously made in setting up this voicing is that it produces a whistle that requires especially sensitive breath control. There are many who find that it’s too demanding; however, there are just as many, or maybe even more, including some well known recording artists, who find themselves able to adapt to that whistle’s particular requirements and who play it beautifully.
I should say here, regardless of where or when one of my whistles was purchased, I stand behind every whistle. If anyone ever is unhappy with one of my whistles, I’ll retweak it, replace it, or refund their money – whatever it takes to make sure they’re 100% happy with the whistle and with the transaction overall.
I try to never let a whistle out the door that isn’t within a very close standard of performance. While I agree with Peter that it’s best to pick a whistle hands on, out of a selection of several, I try to produce my whistles so that any one I send out should be very acceptable. And as I said, if it’s not, I’ll make sure the customer is happy in the end, no matter what it takes for me to accomplish that.
Here, incidentally, is my eBay feedback, which I believe reflects the effort I go to in this respect:
http://cgi2.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback&userid=homestar7
My whistles, including the pre-1980’s vintage voiced Generations, are available directly from me or from www.thewhistleshop.com, www.whistleanddrum.com and www.bigwhistle.co.uk. Elderly Instruments, www.elderly.com, is carrying my tweaked Shaws only.
With my very best wishes,
Jerry
First of all, let me stress again I think Jerry’s Generation is a fine whistle by any standard.
The bluetop Jerry sent me is a nice whistle and the red top that came before it too even though the later version was a slight improvement. Jerry at the time told me made some minor alterations to the tweakingscheme after the one he sent me so I am not talking about the very latest version.
I am not arguing the quality of the Jerry Gen.
Why I think you should try any whistle. Whistles have different characteristics and players look for different things in a whistle. To get the best possible match between the two there’s no way around trying them out yourself.
Jerry makes a point of increasing what he calls ‘playability’. Basically the whistle is more resistant to blowing too hard, in the process demanding more air and pressure for normal playing compared to an untweaked whistle. This is fine if you are a strong blower or lack breath control. When you are used however to a standard Generation, as most whistleplayers I know would be, this is not an advantage.
In fact it can be a disadvantage. An untweaked Generation and especially the older ones are lovely easy players with an easy transition between octavesthat play totally without a problem when you are used to them .
If you come from that perspective the tweaked one will be harder to play. The first tweaked Generation Jerry sent me was extremely hard to play from my perspective [and the four or five people that tried it all agreed it was almost unplayable, in fact I would much have preferred the untweaked one Jerry sent as a comparison but that one had a rattle in the octave]it was the epitome of Wombat’s bad guitar, you could play it but you wouldn’t want to. Jerry adjusted that and his present whistles are much easier to play although I still find they ask that bit more attention. I have no big problem with the increased air demand but I do notice it and have to adjust toit. Some very fine whistleplayers, much finer whistleplayers than I am, told me though they wouldn’t play that bluetop because of the octave’s extra demand for air.
Please don’t misunderstand me, there are as many players who prefer the extra pressure. And I give this example only to illustrate you can look at a whsitle from very different perspectives. Steve Jones is always giving out about the ‘mealy mouthed’ O Briains while I for sweetness and ease of playing probably would prefer them. It is a matter of personal preference and that is why you will have to see if the whistle’s playing characteristics suit you.
About the 1970s Generations comparison: I have a bluetop/nickel one here that is a very easy and balanced player even though it is probably not the greatest you’ll find. It does have that old Sean Potts type of sweetness to it and is very well balanced between the octaves. It is a very different whistle from Jerry’s bluetop, they both sound like Genrations would overall but the playing character is different and the balance of the sound is very different. I told Jerry that at the time but I also said that there are pay offs, Jerry’s whistle has a clearer tone, has a stronger lower octave but the high notes are also much stronger. There’s gain there as well as a bit of loss compared to the older whistle. Again, you will have to look at the whistle and take it on it’s own terms and enjoy it for what it is, if it suits your playing.
Just an update - I decided to pick up a tweeked brass Generation D from the Whistle Shop. Nice folks at the Whistle Shop, btw.
Thanks for all of the input and suggestions in the thread.
I’ll update w/my experience once I get it and play it for a bit.
All the best.
