To change your Tin Whistle's tonal character

Whistle
1

What part of the whistle and what means do you think is important?

My easy tip is that you should scratch with your sandpapers its windway part inside and edge part(of its mouthpiece). In this way I changed my Clarke’s Celtic Tin Whistle to my taste.Now I got louder sound on its lowest octave part and its two high octave got more fascinating to me.

How you scratch your mouthpiece is difficult to explain to me but if you have good breathing tecnique and if you are sure that you cant change its tone much better with your tecnique because of its whistle’s character, this tip helps :slight_smile:

Why I do this is that I suspect whistle makers cant pay much attention to the details(esp. of tonal issue) of each inexpensive wind instrument’s mouth piece because of its cost issue.

Any suggestion/more information?


Thanks

2

Hiro,

The slang word we all use for what you are describing is to “tweak” a whistle, meaning to fiddle around with it to improve its performance.

This is a topic that comes up time and time again. If you do a search of the forum, searching for “tweak” (to begin with, try searching in the subject heading only), I’m sure you’ll find a lot of posts on this subject.

Some “tweaking methods” are described on the main Chiff & Fipple website. Among the favourite ones discussed here are:

  • scraping or dulling the “ramp” or the “blade” of the head

  • filling the cavity at the back of the head with wax or other material

  • making the “window” smaller by gluing a piece of plastic to extend the ramp

  • narrowing the windway by inserting toothpicks, or by heating and squeezing.

Hope this helps
Steve

3

StevieJ wrote:

The slang word we all use for what you are describing is to
“tweak” a whistle, meaning to fiddle around with it to improve its performance.


Thanks StevieJ,now I learned what “tweak” meant. I kept wondering what that meant for a while :slight_smile:

4

On 2002-07-24 16:26, StevieJ wrote:
The slang word we all use for what you are describing is to “tweak” a whistle, meaning to fiddle around with it to improve its performance.

Ah, the wonders of trying to explain a euphemism (tweak) with another euphemism (fiddle) while using yet another euphemism for euphemism (slang)!

Well done, both of you!

5

I tweaked an Oak fipple and immediately ruined it beyond redemption. I don’t think that sanding the windway was the problem. I think my mistake was that I ran the paper down the windway, and then turned it up and out through the little “window”. I then rounded off the upper edge at the end of the windway. All it took was a couple of strokes and she was GONE. I should have taken Dale’s advice and had that herbal tea first.

6

On 2002-07-24 18:34, Whitmores75087 wrote:
I tweaked an Oak fipple and immediately ruined it beyond redemption. I don’t think that sanding the windway was the problem. I think my mistake was that I ran the paper down the windway, and then turned it up and out through the little “window”. I then rounded off the upper edge at the end of the windway. All it took was a couple of strokes and she was GONE. I should have taken Dale’s advice and had that herbal tea first.

The way I feel about Oaks is that they come from the factory almost ruined anyway, so you didn’t have far to go. It’s strange to me that the Oak sounds so bad but the Acorn is actually pretty good off the shelf. Why can’t they make the Oak better?