I thought it would be simple, devilishly simple, but alas…My waterweasel tubes do not fit Jim’s same key headpiece and vice versa (couldn’t think of a daintier way to put that). On the D, C, Eflat set all of my tubes are too big and won’t even enter Jim’s headpiece; Jim’s tubes are way too small and won’t even stay in the headpiece on my set (still doesn’t sound right). To look at them they’re all the same including the inside of the headpiece shafts. Does Glenn actually machine all sets to not fit universally into other top joints?
Am I being a nudnick with too much time on his hands to even bring this up?
Each whistle is hand-machined to fit itself. He doesn’t have any sort of consistent standard – for instance, I’m fairly sure you can’t swap the heads on my two WW Ds.
When I asked Glenn about getting an extra barrel (either an E for a C/D/Eb set or an F for a G), he said it would be a pain, because I’d have to send my whistle back to him so that he could fit the barrel to the head.
Seems inefficient on the one hand (not to have some pre-programmed machine to do the work), OTOH, you KNOW you’ve got a truly handmade instrument. Even if it IS made out of plumbing pipe!!
