It’s just different ways of saying the same thing, I guess. I’m using “narrow” and “wide” to refer to the vertical plane, like in “he opened his eyes wide” and “she narrowed her eyes” (the eyelids are widening and narrowing from below and above, not from the sides).
But if “higher” and “lower” are the preferred terms I should use them. Yes I’m talking about vertical distances.
(To me “high” and “low” are about an object’s position in space, not about the relative width or narrowness of an aperture, but maybe that’s just me.)
I’ve been looking for this info, and trying to understand, as I’m going to order one if I can get the money together… does this mean the .97 ‘soft blower’ is his standard?.. that’s what most people order?.. and some smaller percentage order the medium blower? I’ve been in rooms with them, but always busy, and I don’t know anyone with one well enough to get into it with them. The only ones I see around here are passing through with musicians.
I wrote standard soft blower to differentiate it from very soft blower which is not a whistle he makes regularly. Normally the 0.97mm is the softest low D he makes. But, though I’m guessing, it’s probably the most popular choice too. It was my first Goldie. Despite its name I should say it is by no means a free blower and has a moderate amount of backpressure probably akin to something like the MK Pro from what others have told me. Colin’s medium blower has quite a high amount of backpressure, much more than most other Low Ds.
The first Low Whistle I ever saw or heard played in person was an early Bernard Overton Low D owned by local player Chris Moran, in the late 1970s. Chris had recently returned from a period living in Ireland and he may of got the Overton there.
Chris had removed the alloy block and replaced it with a self-made one. It was some kind of black plastic.
It was a bit loose so it could be raised, lowered, and tilted a bit. Chris would sometimes fuss with it, to get a certain sweet spot he wanted.
I could be wrong but I think he had it angled a bit, wider where you blow and narrower at the window. This is what I meant by “tapered ramp”.
He developed that skill of inhaling through the mouthpiece to keep the windway from clogging as he played. I don’t know if the toothpastse and dish detergent tricks had been thought of back then.
Okay, Richard. That’s what I thought you meant. No, Colin has never made whistles with a tapered windway to my knowledge. I don’t know that any whistles with their origins in the Overton design i.e. Overton, Goldie and Chieftains have used a tapered windway but I may be wrong.
What Chris Moran did was basically the opposite of Davy Spillane who used the existing block but replaced it with the tapering in the opposite direction so that it was narrower at the entrance to the windway than at the exit.
I would go back and delete some of my earlier posts in this thread if I could.
Because for Christmas I got something I needed- a quality high-tech metric caliper. I re-measured my Goldie headjoints and found my earlier measurments (or the math I did converting inches to mm) were wrong. My old calipers weren’t fine enough to get inside the windway, so I held the caliper at the end of the windway and eye-balled it.
Now I have something fine enough to put inside the windway.
So, I found the windway heights do correspond to normal Goldie specs as would be expected.
The D head is .8mm which is his hard blower.
The C head is 1mm which is his very soft/very easy blower.
So my two Goldie heads represent the extremes of the Goldie range. I’ve always wondered what all of the “hard blower” “soft blower” talk was about, now I know.
My impression, switching back and forth, is that it’s not so much about them blowing harder or softer, but having different playing characteristics in other ways, ease and nimbleness of the 2nd octave, Bottom D power, timbre, etc.
Yes, you do have the extremes of the range. I think both are windway heights that Colin only makes to order.
We’re a bit off-track now with this thread but I would be interested to hear you summarise how you see the playing differences between the two “strengths.”
Thanks for the all the advice. I ended up getting an MK for my son, who as a newbie needed the ease of playing. The new ones have a series of horizontal grooves for the thumb, which makes holding it easier. I also got a couple of size 12 silicone wedding rings from Amazon. They slide on the tube nicely and give him a place to grip. He is an excellent fiddle player who got some whistle lessons when he was a little guy, and prefers the lower octave. Since his goal was speed and ease of care the MK seemed to make the most sense. I agree there are so may whistles out there with so many characteristics. From the eerie echoy haunted sound to the flutelike. The whistle and a plastic poster tube for a case and he’s good to go. If he gets into this I am sure he’ll end up with a handful.
