I’ve noticed a few brands of whistle being manufactured (read: lovingly hand-crafted ) from PVC. As well as your typical tin, nickel, brass, and aluminium (yes, the australian spelling). Never having heard a PVC instrument, I can imagine they’d be a little more mellow and softer than the metals. There’s got to be a good reason for making these things from PVC, right ? Is that all there is to it?
I only have two whistles so far (Meg C and Gen Bb). The Meg is not great (potential fipple surgery coming up on that one), but I really like the Gen. I’m figuring thats got more to do with the shape and size than material though.
Secondly, anyone know suppliers (shops, websites) for Sydney, Australia? These whistles are hard to come by except on ebay it seems.
The first thing, obviously, it that it is a relatively inexpensive and easily worked material.
In the case of Hoovers, at least, it’s also a great sounding material. I have tunable CPVC Hoovers in high E, high D, and mid G, and they are among my favorite and most-played whistles–especially the D and the G.
They have a somewhat “complex” or “rich” tone–almost a “hum”, but NOT a buzz–that I like a lot. It works very well for the slow airs and folk songs that I play.
In addition, the CPVC that Mack uses has a pleasant ivory color, rather than the dead white or odd gray that I’ve seen in other PVC whistles.
Whether it’s more mellow and softer than the metals (and you forgot wood, Shame on Steven for not pointing this out) depends on who’s making the instrument. Mack Hoover’s whistles most definitely fit this, as do Dan Bingamon’s low whistles. Our late-departed Glenn Schultz, OTOH, made some very assertive PVC whistles. Silkstones are pretty in-your-face, too, although a tad mellower in my experience than Glenn’s Water Weasels.
Why PVC? It’s inexpensive, works nicely, and is extremely durable. It’s also widely available – if you’re making alumin(i)um or brass whistles and you run out of material, you can’t generally jump in the car and drive a couple of miles to your local hardware/plumbing/DIY shop for more stock.
I would seriously suggest that the reason pvc pipe is used to make whistles is because it exists. Any tubular material has the potential to be used for whistle making, especially if it is about the right size, cheap and in ready supply.
I’m not sure there are many whistle stockist shops in OZ. There was one on the net, a certain CSX, but I’m not sure if they even exist any more, they don’t seem to respond to emails. You could try Sou’west Collectables and Music if you are around Koroit, but that’s all I know of personally. The best bet is to go to one of the big southern music festivals, there are usually a couple of makers there. Drop me a pm and I’ll give you some details.
I used a set of instructions found on the forums (http://science.univr.it/~gonzato/whistle/) to make a PVC whistle. I could only find large diameter tubing, so made a low G. Pretty rough workmanship, as to be expected, but I can see that these things have some real potential. It’s close to tune, nice and mellow cause of the wide bore, reasonably quiet (cause of the narrow windway slot I used), and three octaves if pushed HARD. Not tuneable cause I used the fixed headpiece, but it can be adjusted to flip octaves more or less easily by sliding the fipple back and forth and making the windway opening smaller/larger.
I guess the “dont knock it until you’ve tried it” motto applies here. I’ll surely be making another, putting some more effort into the fipple so I can get a good head and make changeable bodies (if I can find some thinner PVC, cause you’d never get above an A in this heavy stuff).
? Is that all there is to it?