For anyone who has successfully tweaked a Generation D whistle, just how did you go about it? I bought 2 just for tweaking experimentation.I have so far on one whistle wax filled the cavity and attempted the tweaks as listed on the C&F website. There was only slight improvement, as the upper octave breaks up quite badly while the lower octave sounds a bit better but not much more than before tweaking. Either I have a non-cooperating Generation D or am lousy at tweaking. I do so yearn for one of those great sounding Generations I have heard!
Success! I just spent the better part of the last hour tweaking both of my Generations D whistles. The 2nd one that I hadn’t yet tweaked simply needed a wax fill in the cavity and cleaning of the excess material. So I went back to the 1st whistle which I thought was beyond help. I figured I had nothing to lose, and I went to work on the blade with a sharp knife and slightly dulled it a miniscule amount at a time. I was surprised how much I had to take off this particular whistle, but it worked. I now have 2 excellent Generations D whistles. One is still just a touch shrill, but I am sure it is just a matter of adjusting my breath control to the whistle. All it took was some bravery in re-working the blade a bit. Count me in the Generations club!
Something I keep wondering about is the wax filling of the fipple cavity. While this might help stability of tone and volume, on trying I found the tone to become somehow “heavy” and unpleasant. A Gen Eb of mine started sounding like a trumpet. So I removed almost all wax from my Gens. The whistles sound more breezy and more fragile, but, at least to my ear, lighter and “folkier”. I think it was Mike R. who called the wax thing “stuffing a t-shirt into a Martin Guitar”. Lovely thought!
Having tweaked my Generations Ds enough to encourage myself to play them, I’ve now removed the blu-tack from the cavity, and I can still play the Generation nicely. I think it was just my breath control that needed work.
Without doing the tweak, though, I might never have played the thing enough to get the breathing right.
I only had trouble with the D, all other keys I have (G, F, Eb, C and Bb) didn’t seem to need it.
So I’ve now taken the “T-shirt out of the guitar”, but my ear still can’t detect any difference in tone. Now to take the T-shirt out of my ears…