On every instrument there are gear heads and non gear heads. Nobody really finds this puzzling except some people who wrongly assume tthat a top player simply has to be a gear head. (I could name a top ITM player who is a chronic gear head but I won’t—not even if you send me a PM.)
What I found puzzling about this topic when it came up in the past was that some people seemed to think that there is something wrong with gear heads, that somehow their head is in the wrong place. This looked weird to me and I said so; nobody would adopt that attitude if this were any other instrument.
Now I think I see what is really at issue. If you own a lot of guitars, no guitarist finds that puzzling, if you can play well. No guitarist has ever questioned why I own a lot of guitars since every one is there for a specific purpose which I can describe and illustrate. Each guitar sounds different because, even in a very high-quality instrument, the designer must make numerous compromises and how he or she does that determines what the result sounds like, when played well. (Sure I could get by with one or two and use a guitar simulator to mimic the sounds of different guitars but it wouldn’t mimic playing characteristics.) Non-musicians have been known to raise an eyebrow though.
If you are a gear head, and you play really badly, people tend to regard that as just sad. If you haven’t put in the years of practice you won’t make one guitar sound good, let alone several.
I suppose that, since whistles are cheaper than guitars, more people are likely to just keep buying in the hope of finding the one that will make them sound great.
I’m sure that if I’d never bought another whistle after my squawky Feadog or my out-ot-tune-with-itself Dixon, I would have given up on the whistle long before now. Even the pre-tweaking Clarke Original was a bit too much even for my giant lungs. Then I sprung for a Burke, and I was able to start making some progress.
The same thing happened with guitars. I started out with a Sears Silvertone that tore up my fingertips, had bad intonation, and worse sound. I didn’t get very far with it. Then I got a nice little Martin ($99.00 at the time, vs. $27.00 for the Silvertone), and everything about guitar playing became possible.
Yep.
I’m very skeptical about this.
I’ve heard the same argument applied to guitars. “Tony Rice would still sound like Tony Rice if he played a cigar box strung with rubber bands.” is one of the more extreme I’ve seen in a forum. Frankly, I doubt that he’d sound like much on my old Silvertone. I’m sure he couldn’t play nearly as smoothly on it as he does on Clarence White’s old D-28.
I should have saved my Feadog head and my Dixon, just in case I ever get to see any of the great whistlers live and could talk them into running through a couple of tunes on them.
Of course, I’ve only been on C&F for a little over a year, but I’ve yet to see anyone here make the latter claim. Can anyone show me a thread to prove me wrong? I’m beginning to think that the existence of that myth is itself a myth.
On the other hand, if a good player will “sound well on any whistle”, why go to the trouble of finding a “good one” in the first place? But if a whistle that’s screechy, raspy, and unresponsive is not good enough for you, why should a beginner be expected to overcome those bad qualities?
I doubt that there are many adults who are naive enough to think that a great whistle will turn them into a great player, but I’ll bet that lots of us have had the experience that a terrible whistle in the beginning won’t let us advance very far in our playing.
One of the reasons I picked the Burke DAN for my first high-end whistle was that I was told that it was a favorite of Joanie Madden for slow airs. Since I was interested in slow airs, and since Joanie Madden seems to be held in high esteem by many folks, I figured that this whistle would be able to provide the kind of sound that I was interested in. I never expected that it would make me play like Joanie. What I did expect was that it wouldn’t stop me from playing like her.
OK, to answer Susan’s question, gear heads are people who are obsessed with equipment. They constantly talk about the different playing characteristics of different instruments, want the latest gadget, no matter what it is or does, concern themselves greatly with who plays what on which record. They don’t only want to know the make and serial number of every amp Hendrix ever used, they want to know what brand of valve he used when he needed a replacement and which supermarket he bought it from. That sort of thing.
In the case of successful guitarists, it means having examples of not just every kind of guitar out there but also examples from every year in which the specifications changed. In the case of rock guitarists, that means a collection of hundreds of guitars, some of them carrying six-figure price tags. Now, no matter how serious you are, nobody needs that many guitars.
I speak only of those who don’t care or aren’t qualified on their own to figure out what differnce having a quality whistle makes. And you can be pretty sure that telling them the difference won’t make much difference anyway if they can’t already tell. Best take some professional’s word for it.
I keep buying them just to see what they sound like. How can I know which ones will please me most until I’ve tried them for a while?
It’s great that they’re relatively cheap. If I’d bought as many guitars as I have whistles over the same time period, I’ve have spent about US$60,000-$75,000 over the past year. That’s just a tad more than my current level of disposable income.
Once I’ve tried another 20-30 whistles, I can imagine settling down with 3 or 4 favorite high Ds, one each: pure, not so pure, quiet (for when everyone else is sleeping), and tough (to keep in the car), and maybe just one each in G, A, C, and high E. I’m not convinced that I want a low D, but I feel that I need to try a few more to be sure.
I have a lot more experience with guitars, so I don’t need to actually own so many to find the ones I need, because a half hour with one in a music store will tell me all I need to know.
My Martin D-35 is a great rhythm guitar. I have three more for slide, acoustic blues, and classical.
I’ll probably end up adding a Collings dreadnaught (maybe a D-2HA cutaway) for lead. because the D-35 won’t cut through in a jam–especially in the upper registers. Last June, on my way to the West Coast C&F Whistle Fest, I stopped in at Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto and played a great D-2HA that would have satisfied me, but I wasn’t in a position to spend the big bucks at the time. I think it was $3750. I can try out quite a few high-end whistles for that.
I would love to have a good Strat and an electric archtop, but given the realities of my life, they’d be hard to justify.
Say, Wombat, I bet this is one you don’t have: http://www.gryphonstrings.com/instpix/23082/23082.html I can feel the GAS coming on. I just need to find a copy of Pete Seeger’s 12-string Guitar as Played by Leadbelly.
1967 Martin D-28 converted to 12-string (originally owned by Mark Spoelstra):
As far as I’m concerned, the tone is what makes me want to play-and finding the tone that I like is very important. So knowing what whistle (or flute, etc.) a musician is playing is important to me (famous or not!).
So, it won’t sound exactly like it does with him playing, or on the recording, but it will probably have the basic tone that I do like. If I have the tone that pleases me, that will inspire me to learn the tunes too, and get better in my playing skills.
There you go Barry! I have been whistling of maybe half a year now. I am a beginner. I do know from the whistles I own and have tried, that some are more forgiving, thus I enjoy playing them more. More important than that, to me, and I see a few others here, is that the tone is very important. If I don’t like the tone, I am less likely to pick up the whistle. I think anyone who’s played more than a few whistles, and I think about 99% of the people here fit in that category, know what I’m talking about. I can only imagine, however, that once a whistler hits a certain level of ability, what I would consider “accomplished”, their exeperience will afford them the ability to make just about any whistle sound good. Only time will tell if I get even close to that. For me, it’s mostly the enjoyment of playing for me. If anyone else likes it, that’s gravy!
Despite the topic slightly drifting, i must say i have very much enjoyed this debate, fine minds and all with valid points. this is what i love about this board…intelligent and reasoned discussion, regardless of wether it is necessarily right or otherwise.
Bruce lee once said regarding his passion (martial arts) absorb what is useful and discard the rest, a wonderful life philosophy, no point to this, just a truely good thing to remember
By all accounts it would seen i may be a gear head, i have an logical thought process, I embrace cause and effect factors in daily life, in an effort to improve life.
I am a victim of whoa,
I have amassed a fair collection of whistles, and i love them all despite their inherent individual weaknesses.
To me it seems reasonable to play various whistles to suit the circumstance
or the style of music played,
still i believe one important fact should always be considered,
A whistle / whistle player must always sound good solo, without backup.
other instruments will add to the overall feel of a tune, but if the player or his / her instrument is not up to scratch, the performance will be lacking,
skill level is vital
but just as important is the instrument
for argument sake a person may argue which is more important for life,
your lungs or your liver???
the fact is you need both
the same applies to skill level and tone quality of an instrument in any circumstance.
I believe any advantage is worth while considering, and persuing,
I love knowing what others play and feel about instruments,
for what its worth
i have heard a wonderful whistler playing a sweetone with only a guitar and bodhran as backup, a great performance
but the same person and the same instrument in a session sounded like crap.
horses for courses i say
regards David
Right Mike and it’s one I won’t be getting. I’d rather have a vintage D28 untampered with actually. My accoustics follow something like your pattern. 00028 for finger picking and rhythm, D28 for flatpicking, vintage K-Yairi 12 string, resonator for slide and a Gretsch 1939 reissue that I don’t really need as the 00028 does the same job better. The resonator was cheap but good and the D28 is a Shenandoah also relatively cheap, for a Martin, and a bit too boomy in the baritone range. (It’s still much better than their current entry level guitars.) My electrics are an early 60s Epiphone Casino, a Les Paul black beauty, a strat, a tele and a tele copy for slide. The strat is an early Squier from the period when they were using vintage American strat parts. I tried numerous full-price strats before buying it and it sounded just as good at a quarter the price.
I think with guitars you can often pay twice as much to get an extra 5-10% so, beyond a certain point, it isn’t much worth it. That said, to get value from a cheap guitar you have to be very lucky or very experienced and persistent.
Good question, but not one it’s easy to give a straight answer to. The earliest one I bought would be the Epiphone about 40 years ago. I wanted a versatile guitar that would be good for blues but also jazz. That suggested a semi-accoustic but I’d had bad luck with them earlier. B.B. King played blues on a Gibson semi-accoustic and I loved his sound. Gibson had just bought out Epiphone and the Casino was like a cheaper version of the guitar King played—it’s well known as the sunburst guitar the Beatles played. I saw one secondhand and tried it to see if I could get the sound I wanted. I could so I bought it.
Gibson Les Pauls, Fender Stratocsters and Telecasters are played by hundreds of players many of whom I love. So long as the sound isn’t heavily processed, I can tell if someone is playing one of those on record just from the tone. But no individual influenced me. Same with Martins which would be number one choice for just about every bluegrass player and many others. Resonators are used by a lot blues slide players but nobody influenced the brand I bought, I just went with the best sounding one I could find within my budget. All the others were just cases of stumbling on something with the right sound and the right price.
It turned out that the cheap Telecaster copy I bought for playing electric slide (a Teisco) was commonly used for that purpose by well known slide guitar players like Ry Cooder, but I didn’t know that when I bought it. They have weird electronics and a sound that just works wonderfully well for slide. But, after 40 years of playing and trying other people’s guitars, you know what’s out there, you know what you like and then it’s just a matter of trying them out and resisting the temptation to buy until you find one that feels and sounds exactly right. If a guitar is cheap but gets me the same sound or better as one 4 times the price, I’m delighted and I don’t care about the snob value I’m missing. Of course, if I’m ever forced to sell, the resale value will be low but I can live with that.
