Curious why whistles are all cylindrical cross sections or conical. Is it because they were adapted from transverse blown instruments like flutes? I thought a square or rectangular cross section on a whistle might work as a better waveguide to match the shape of the fipple blade, but I’ve never seen one.
There are square bore recorders, flutes, and I believe pipe organ pipes out there. In addition, I know of at least one reputable whistle maker who has constructed a square bore whistle - told me it was VERY loud though.
Not being an acoustical engineer, I couldn’t begin to make an educated guess on whether or not a square bore would make a better wave guide for a fippled instrument. I will say that an awful lot of R&D has gone into the design of recorders over the years (much more than whistles) so I imagine if square bores were better, you see many more than the few that are out there…you’d think anyway.
Loren “It’s hip to be Square!” B.
[ This Message was edited by: Loren on 2001-11-18 10:38 ]
There are two reasons that I know of – It’s difficult to make a square bore. Even extruded material, such as high-current water-cooled wire, with a square cross-section, has a round bore (although that may be for strength reasons).
Second, they do make square-bore organ pipes, but only for the lowest notes. I believe that the square cavity has a lower resonant frequency and/or damps higher harmonics, so the whistle would have to be very short or very low. It might make a low-A that’s actually playable.
It might also make the holes hard to cover.
Charlie
There are two reasons that I know of – It’s difficult to make a square bore. Even extruded material, such as high-current water-cooled wire, with a square cross-section, has a round bore (although that may be for strength reasons).
Second, they do make square-bore organ pipes, but only for the lowest notes. I believe that the square cavity has a lower resonant frequency and/or damps higher harmonics, so the whistle would have to be very short or very low. It might make a low-A that’s actually playable.
It might also make the holes hard to cover.
Charlie
it would be fairly easy to glue up a square bore,even a tapered one.there is a method for this by craig fischer ,only his are for uilleann pipe chanters.it can be found on david dayes web site.i had good luck with one.
cheers,tansy
Sounds like you’re just guessing agian here Charlie.
Regarding construction: As someone mentioned, one could glue up a square bore wooden instrument, and this has been done. You could use prefabricated square aluminum or plastic tubing (think towel racks). Virtually any metal can be produced in box section shape and cut to length, look at how aluminum, steel, and titanium are used in things like bicycle and motorcycle frames. Composites like carbon fiber (which is used to construct the bodies of some very high priced flutes) can also me made with a square bore.
As for the square shape muffling high frequencies and only working for low whistles I don’t think so: Smaller square bore instruments like chanters, flutes and soprano whistles have already been made with square bores and seem to work and sound fine. Also, Bose is currently using a square/rectangular wave guide to reproduce a full range of sound in some of it’s products.
Loren
A square bore works fine as long as you apply the equivalent area to square as you do the circle. Length/bore calculations work the same way.
I once considered making the basswhistle a square pipe like the Paetzold Recorder, but PVC pipe is so easy to come by.
For large whistles, square bores are attractive because you don’t have to turn a “telephone pole” sized instrument in your lathe.
Take the round whistle inner diameter x 0.88623 to determine in interior width of an equivalent square whistle.
[ This Message was edited by: Daniel_Bingamon on 2001-11-19 22:11 ]
I picked up in a flea-market, a very old rectangular - deeper than wide - section whistle - can’t put my hand on it now - was about C or D tuning. I think it was called something like an “organette”. Nice sound. I am in Australia.
Loren
Who makes the square cross section soprano whistle you mentioned?
[ This Message was edited by: Bobj on 2001-11-21 12:05 ]
For what it’s worth…
High powered radars on Navy ships use rectangular waveguides. I know RF isn’t the same as sound, but surely similar principles apply.
jb
jb,
To answer for Loren, Colin Goldie has made a square whistle. I’ve had a chance to play it and it is indeed louder than it’s round counterpart. Takes a few seconds to figure out how to hold it, but then you’re good to go.
Colin mentioned that he may offer this as a standard whistle, but I’ll let him chime in on that. Colin?
Peace,
Erik
Umm…okay Erik, I was sworn to secrecy, so I wasn’t going to name names. However, since you’ve already spilled the beans 
I see no harm in confirming for Bob that it was indeed Colin Goldie that I was referring to.
Now anyone else who wants a square Overton will have to get on the list behind me, since I have first dibbs, heh heh. I hoping to have mine anodised by the way.
I’m sure Colin could adjust the volume by using a smaller size square tubing or making the whistle in C instead of D.
Loren
Actually, the beans were spilled some time ago… there have been previous threads on this same topic a while back, which is actually where I first heard that he was working on it.
Erik
p.s. Colin, if I disclosed as secret that you wanted to keep, I certainly apologize!
So does it sound different? How? Just loader? I thought it might have a more pure sound - tighter frequency, less broadband on each note; sort of how a nicely tuned bell sounds better than banging on a trash can lid. (OK maybe that analogy is a bit extreme…)
And your right. Brownja, I did think of this after looking at radar waveguides.
Erik,
You may be right, it’s entirely possible that I missed the mention of Colin’s square whistle in another thread. I’ve known about it for quite some time, but never named names.
Anyway, a square whistle would make a great paper weight/conversation piece for one’s home or office, wouldn’t it? It won’t roll off the desk and you can have a tune at your fingertips whenever the mood strikes you.
I’ve also asked Colin to keep an eye out for triangular tubing - I think a triangular (cross section) whistle would be way cool too - gotta have one if the tubing is out there somwhere!
Loren “Funky shapes are us” B.
I’ve seen triangular shapes in hobby shops, but only in brass and in pretty small dimensions. I’ve used some in architectural models, but they were only 1/4" +/- across.
E
I think a triangular cross section would tend to dampen out the waveform, although it would look cool.
In a circular cross section, like most whistles, the waveshapes should look like sausage links or American football shapes.
In a square or rectangular cross section, I think the wave would look more two dimensional, like a ribbon shaped sine wave ( like an “S”) looked at from the edge with the start of the wave at the fipple blade. Then the squared off fipple blade is providing all the energy in a longitudinal (up and down) direction, no lateral (side to side)component to the wave. So you expect to end up with a different sound, but I don’t know how it would be different.