My low D whistle-building progresses steadily. I have now done everything but drilled the holes. There is a problem with the tuning, though.
When I position the tuning slide so that the whistle is perfectly on pitch on the low D, when I jump the octave the whistle doesn’t quite get all the way up. It’s about 30 cents (hundredths of a semitone) flat, unless I blow unreasonably hard. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to lessen this problem before I drill the holes? Or is the problem perhaps simply that I haven’t drilled the holes yet?
I’ll take a wild stab at this. I’m going to guess that your fundamental is weak, and so you can’t blow very hard on it, and so when you do go to the octave, you are not blowing enough to support it up there and so it is flat. Nah, that can’t be it. Now I’ve got it. The opposite is happening. The fundamental is so strong that the whistle doesn’t want to jump the octave, and so the octave is flat. No, that aint it either. Anyway, I had the opposite happen with some PVC, where the octave was sharp. I was using a strobe tuner. I have had a difficult time in the low D area. I did make a low Eb out of PVC, and had to drill about 4 or 5 tubes just to get the intonation close. I did make a very nice copper high D, but haven’t got the interest to glue all the parts together. I did have a wooden fipple plug come out after a few days. That’s when I decided to just buy a rod of Delrin to use as the plug. And instead of gluing, I just drill a hole through the fipple and then insert some kind of rod, file it down, then shape the end to the mouthpiece. Even that part is difficult.
Make sure your tuning slide isn’t causing a narrowing of the bore, this can flatten the octave. Other than that, what diameter tubing are you using, could that be causing a problem?
Thanks for your suggestions, both of you. I think I got it now. I simply filed down the edges of the main bore inside the tuning sleeve a bit. It seems that they were too sharp (i had just de-burred them, not really shaped them at all).
My whistle still is a little bit flat on the octave, but little enough not to be noticed.
Now, to drill the holes.. this will be interesting..
