For the past month or so I’ve been shipping musical instruments around the country, and yesterday this WhOA version of casting my bread upon the waters paid off in fairly spectacular fashion: in exchange for a passle (sp.?) of whistles tubes, Mack Hoover sent me a Whitecapped Sweetone (key of C).
Many of us have experienced and written about the transformation that ordinary whistles undergo with the substitution of one of Mack’s Whitecaps–what you might call the Cadillac of tweaks. This Hooverized Sweetone could best be described as distilled essence of Clarke-ness. Everything you like about Clarkes is enhanced by the clear, sweet, tone of the Whitecap. Moreover, the full body of Clarke whistles comes through more clearly–the whistle has excellent volume and a big, round sound. As an added benefit, there appears to me to be a small addition of back pressure that makes this whistle a real pleasure to play.
In fact, I like it almost as well as the Skipole C I got from Mack a few weeks ago.
How you go about getting this depends on how you want to do it. There are basically two ways.
Mack needs a Sweetone to work on. If you have a Sweetone you want to modify, you can send it to him, and he’ll send it back with the Whitecap attached. The cost is about $30. On the other hand, he often has whistles already available or can buy them for you. In that case, there will be an extra charge for the whistle body. You can work out the details by email–Mack’s very accommodating.
Mack is incredible, and the whitecap can take an average whistle to new heights! He is also very willing to work with you to get you exactly what you want.
Just drop him an email (from his website listed above) or check the members area on C&F (he lists his email on his profile). Unless he has a whistle body laying around that’s an exact match for yours, I’d send him the body of your whistle (you pay postage) and he then sends the body with the whitecap made to fit it back your way (I’m pretty sure the cost is only $20). If he’s providing a body to go with the whitecap, the cost is probably a little higher.
elendil - I’m sure you’re right about the different sized heads. After all, you just got one! In all honesty, I didn’t think about the need for a specialized white cap to fit a Sweetone body, but it sure makes sense!
