I have a walton LBW that squeaks and squawks in the second octave. The first octave is just fine. Today I was playing and for some reason I put a tooth pick in the window to see if it would affect the second octave. It played beautifully in the second octave but the bell note was a little weak. Bloom, Jerry , Serpent is this related to the guitar pick tweak? I think I could glue a small tooth pick type thing across the windway and get the results I did earlier. I have never heard of this kind of tweak. It seems that disturbing the air stream in this way does wonders I could even play in the third octave. A little shrill though. Comments?
Hi, Ron! I don’t know where in the window you put the toothpick. Sometimes the second octave is weak because the window length (the space between the end of the fipple plug and the edge of the blade) is a bit too great. The toothpick may have caused some turbulence to start at a range of higher frequencies - lots of possibilities. Just shortening that distance by a fraction, 0.010 or even less, is enough to make a difference. Try the guitar pick tweak and see if you can achieve the same or similar results. That’d be my approach.
Cheers, and Happy Holidays!
serpent
I experimented a little. If I placed the tooth pick in the window directly in front of the windway it works wonderful. I can also place the tooth pick on an angle in the window so that it covers a little bit of one side of the windway. From this I tried sticking the tooth pick directly in the corner of the windway narrowing the windway from side to side. All of these worked well
