A couple of people have asked me about the tweak I have done to a Dixon. I had posted it, but it was in response to another topic, in a thread where searchers may not find. So I will reproduce here what I wrote, so it can be found.
Extremely simple. I cut some 0.25mm thick plastic sheet to shape and glued it to the floor of the windway. The plastic sheet can be bought on line reasonably cheaply. It can be cut with scissors. The Dixon windway tapers slightly, so when you cut the sheet right it will not slip further down the windway. If you leave a little bit of plastic hanging out of the mouthpiece you can find the optimum position of the far edge of the insert. For me that seemed to be such that the inserted sheet almost, but not quite, reached the bevel at the end of the fipple block. About half a millimetre seemed about right. Almost as if continuing the bevel… and next time I will bevel the insert to match.
When I was happy with it, I stuck it down with ‘Pritt Stick’ (non-stick glue!). Coat the insert, push it into place and use a spatular to firm it down. wait for the glue to ‘set’ or whatever it does, and cut the protruding tab off. I expect, but cannot confirm, that the Pritt will fail eventually; it can probably be undone by soaking in warm water - but I am not sure.
I thought the increase in air resistance really beneficial, and the tone cleaned up a bit, but this may be ‘proud father’ syndrome. The bottom end got stronger (or more correctly it got easier to get the really strong bottom end) and at the top I am able to double overblow e,f#,g to b’,c#‘,d’.
Give it a try…
The tweak is almost entirely invisible - I am not sure that a photo would show much. I will have a try tomorrow when there is some natural light around, but I am not hopeful. All you will see from the blowing end is a small white line along the bottom of the windway. Peering in through the window you might see even less. If I had had black plastic sheet instead of white, then the tweak would have been completely invisible…
We did not get much ‘natural light’ today, but I took these. Hope they help:
[supposition][theory][speculation]
I think that Tony’s original design for the geometry of the sound producing head itself (as opposed to how the head fits the body) is common across several models. The head on the TB0012D looks remarkably like the head on the 3 piece tapered bore low D and I have also modified that the same way to good effect. (I have further modified the latter whistle to give it a stronger bottom end).
This common head design started out, I believe, with a higher windway and lower air requirements The windway ceiling was later lowered (by 0.1mm I think) to reduce air requirement. If this is correct then it all happened about or before the TB012D went on sale. Anyway, I think that the lowered air requirement was an improvement, but that the air stream was displaced away from the blade a little. Raising the air stream by raising the floor of the not only reduces the air requirement further, but may help realign the air flow to the blade.
[/speculation][/theory][/supposition]