Hi all,
I just got a Doolin and LOVE the sound of it. Problem is it squeaks alot, and shifts too easily from octave to octave. I’ve already done the sandpaper and candle wax tweaks, but it didn’t improve it quite enough, and I’m afraid to go much further in case I render it totally unplayable. I was wondering if anyone had discovered a tweak that works especially well with Doolins. Thanks!
By the way, I tried putting my Little Black head on the Doolin body, which gives it much better stability and volume, but changes the bright tone I like so much completely.
Hi, Soineanta.
A sharper windcutter blade edge will tend to strengthen the upper register at the expense of the lower. A duller blade edge will tend to strengthen the lower register at the expense of the upper. A blade edge further from the windway will tend to favor the lower register at the expense of the upper.
When I encounter what you’ve described (flips into the upper register too easily), I take a piece of 350 or 400 wet-or-dry sandpaper, cut a strip the width that will fit through the window on the top of the mouthpiece and out the end where the tube goes into the mouthpiece. Then I very gently draw the strip back and forth across the blade edge to make it less sharp. This both dulls the edge and microscopically moves it further from the windway, both of which move the balance away from the upper and towards the lower register.
To do this maneuver, I’ve found it takes both hands to hold the two ends of the sandpaper strip, and the mouthpiece (removed from the whistle, obviously) propped against my stomach.
After gently sanding the windcutter edge, I take an exacto or other knife edge and extremely gently scrape (scrape is too strong a word because the knife barely touches the plastic to do this) off the little bit of plastic fuzz that the sandpaper leaves. This needs to be done on both the top and underside of the windcutter edge.
It may take two or three conservative tries at this sequence, noting that the whistle is improving each time, to get it where I’m satisfied with the result.
Best wishes and good luck,
Jerry
P.S. Of course, we must always accept the possibility that we’ll spoil a whistle, but I would recommend that you try. What I’ve described is one of the standard tweaks than many have used successfully.
What Jerry said.
I have a Doolin which was essentially unplayable when I got it. I worked on the blade (using the file on a pair of nail clippers) until it played pretty well. The tone of a Doolin is really nice (and unique).
I’ve found that the more perfectly smooth and uniform any of the surfaces in the mouthpiece, and especially the windcutter blade edge, can be made, the cleaner and more musical the sound produced. Whatever you use to work on the windcutter blade edge, whether the #350 or 400 sandpaper I suggested or a nail cutter file, it’s important to work carefully, clean up any fuzzy or ragged edges, and make sure the result is as as microspically smooth and uniform as possible. It’s also possible to work on the blade edge by very gently scraping with the edge of an exacto or other knife.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Thanks Jerry & Riseard, and Sioneanta for bringing up the topic, I’ll have to try this - my three Doolins are all unplayable.
My tweak was to take the head off and use a Generation head instead.
Martin, thats not a tweak, that’s surgery 
Martin,
In addition to adjusting the blade sharpness, you’ll want to get some sticky tac (easier to use than wax, won’t melt in a hot car) and fill in the cavity under the windway.
Make a ball of sticky tac maybe a little bigger than a pea and drop it into the tube end of the mouthpiece so it falls into the cavity under the windway. Tamp it down with something that has a flat end. I use the handle of an exacto knife. Add bits of sticky tac and tamp them down until the cavity is filled even with the end of the windway so you have as flat and uniform a surface continuing down from the end of the windway as possible. This can do a lot to help clean up and stabilize the sound of the whistle.
Best wishes,
Jerry
My favorite tweak for a Doolin involves a sledgehammer and an anvil, but I know there are good ones out there. I just didn’t have any success tweaking mine. These tweaks sound pretty good.
Hi Jerry,
I did do the BlueTack tweak on a few whistles a year or so back, and it did help me get a stable note out of them.
Then I read a comment, I forget who said it but it was a regular on this board (maybe Jim ‘haiku’ Stone?) “Filling the cavity on a whistle is like stuffing a jumper inside a Martin guitar” or something close. I don’t think it’s quite the same thing, but there’s two schools of thought.
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The cavity is there solely to help in the moulding & manufacture process
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The cavity is there because it adds a unique twist to the sound of the whistle
Actually I’m probably more in the #1 camp, after all Susatos and Clarkes don’t have cavities, but it did nudge me into removing the tack from a couple of whistles to see what happened (and I used tack so I could removie it), and suprisingly they still played well. I think my playing had improved in the meantime, so the squeaks and pops were more my doing than the whistle.
I’ll try the BlueTack after I’ve done a measure of sanding & scraping, if I still can’t get them playable. On my Doolins, the problem is partly if not entirely extra flash from the moulding process around the blade & window. I hope Sara’s were cleaner from the go get.
If it all works, I’m indebted to you because I’ll have some more working whistles (but then I won’t be posting them to you in pieces for your Frankenwhistle experiments…)
Hi, Martin.
I don’t buy into the “The cavity is there because it adds a unique twist to the sound” idea. Unless, of course, one prefers a sound that’s less focused and less stable, which may actually be the case for some. I certainly don’t believe the cavity is there on purpose to produce a certain kind of voicing.
The change I’ve noticed when filling the cavity doesn’t really change the sound of the whistle so much as makes it cleaner and easier to play. The sound that comes out is the same sound, but with less extraneous noise, and less exasperation to the whistler.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Hi Jerry,
I agree with you. To fill the cavity while in the mould would require a big blob of plastic, which would then set slowly from the outside in, and probably twist or crack the fipple. The same principle applies when making pottery, so one doesn’t often see big lumps of clay that aren’t hollowed out (like table lamp bases, for example). In this case the result of trapped moisture is usually more dramatic, exploding the piece in the kiln.
So I think the cavity is definitely a requirement of the moulding process on this style of fipple (Generation, Doolin, Clare, Walton and Feadog that I can think of).
I wonder how much of tweaking is an attempt to force a whistle to play with the amount of breath we prefer. I’m not talking about stuff like flash left over from the molding process, just trying to control squeeks and octave jumps.
I think that you can’t expect a cylindrical whistle to have an even pressure requirement as you move up the scale. It probably isn’t even possible to have a proportional increase in breath pressure as you hit the top half of the second octave.
I know that I almost unconciously do things like pinching my cheeks together or dropping my jaw slightly to adjust breath pressure. Maybe 20 years of playing an Oak taught me a thing or two.
I have a Doolin that played well from the day I got it. The first thing I did was to run a scale and get a feel for how much air each note required. After that, it was a matter of getting practice using it so that the breath control was automatic.
Maybe that is why I wouldn’t want to do a whistle review. “I like it.” can be translated to mean “This whistle performs the way I want it to with the breath requirements I prefer.” Of course, such preferences are entirely subjective.
Thanks all!
I think not sanding the blade down enough was a large part of the problem–I went a little further, and it’s stronger. I noticed that there are almost two blades on a Doolin… the main one, of course, and then there’s a tiny lip below it. I sanded the main one down to right above where the lip was, and then sanded them together so it was a curve rather than a lip. That improved it ALOT. Also, after running another search, I found a post about how Doolins have very low air requirements–I’m used to Clarkes. So probably once I learn how to moderate my breath to suit, it’ll be a fine whistle. Thanks again! 