tweaking..

[sad-seamonster]

I know about trimming away excess material and filling in the little hollow inside with wax, what are the other tweaking tricks? Enlarging a hole is a good way to fix a sharp note?

[Wombat]

Welcome to the board, sad-seamonster.

Sharpening and dulling the blade are other tricks. Thickening the blade in various ways is yet another. This topic has been discussed countless times so, if you do a search under tweaking, you will get enough information to keep you happily tweaking for years, ... well, months anyway. Watch out for posts by Jerry Freeman who has not only produced numerous successfully tweaked whistles but who is also willing to share his very considerable knowledge.

[Jerry Freeman]

Hi, SadSeamonster.

Although the tweaking article on the main C&F board suggests using wax to fill under the windway, most people have switched to poster putty. In the U.S., it's available at WalMart next to the crayons. Make a ball of poster putty about the size of a large pea. Drop it into the cavity under the windway and press it in place with something that has a flat end. I use the flat end of an exacto knife handle. Add or remove poster putty until you have it exactly even with the end of the windway. You want a nice, flat, smooth surface. Bloomfield prefers to indent the poster putty fill so it's concave. I've tried this and don't notice any difference, and I get excellent results the way I do it.

If the bottom two notes are still weak after filling under the windway, you can strengthen them by using something (piece of emery board cut to suitable width, fingernail file, strip of very fine sandpaper, etc.) to remove a little material off the end of the soundblade. It isn't blunting the blade that strengthens the bottom notes; it's the fact that the voicing window length is increased by this. A shorter voicing window favors the upper register; a longer voicing window favors the lower register. Sometimes shortening the soundblade (lengthening the voicing window) by as little as .002 inch will noticeably strengthen the bottom two notes. Or sometimes you have to take off quite a bit more (meaning maybe .010, which is a lot). So go slow and keep checking the effect. Stop when you've got the bottom two notes just strong enough for comfort. If you take off too much, you'll weaken the upper register and/or start to get a raspy timbre.

If the notes are buzzy, seem like there are frequencies from the other register "leaking" into parts of the upper and lower registers or just seem unstable in both registers, a blunter soundblade often corrects this. On the other hand, if the notes are stable and not mixing between the registers, a sharp soundblade usually helps give a nice, sweet, focused sounding upper register that better matches with the lower register. In general, whether the soundblade is left blunt or sharp, the whistle will sound best if the soundblade edge surfaces are as perfectly smooth as possible. I use a strip of #600 sandpaper cut so I can thread it into the voicing window and out the bottom of the mouthpiece. Then I hold the whistlehead against my stomach and pull back and forth with one end of the strip of sandpaper in each hand to polish off the finished soundblade as the final step.

More advanced tweaking involves laminating a piece of something (soda bottle plastic, guitar pick, etc.) to the ramp to create a completely new soundblade edge. This can produce an excellent result, but it's tricky to do and is very hit or miss. I've developed an improvement on this technique, where I laminate a new soundblade edge underneath the ramp, inside the whistlehead, but it's technically demanding, and I wouldn't try to coach someone through it.

I've found that some whistles respond to scraping a little bevel (maybe 1/32" wide on the flat) onto the end of the windway where it meets the voicing window. That would be the end of the fipple plug on a traditional style whistle with a wooden plug. To do this, I use the very end of an angled exacto knife, inserted through the socket end of the whistlehead and gently scrape the corner of the plastic end of the "block" until I have the bevel I want. Then I clean up the end surface of the "block" by scraping gently with the knife through the top. If this doesn't work, there's no going back, but it does work in many cases. I think the best predicter of whether it will work is whether there's a lot of room under the soundblade (see next paragraph) or not. If the soundblade is ideally positioned and there's only a sliver of daylight visible under the blade, the bevel is likely to work well. When it works, it dramatically strengthens the bottom notes and releases (the best word I can think of) the sound throughout the range of the whistle. It also sometimes helps correct a buzzy, unstable or mixed tone. It doesn't seem to work when the soundblade is higher up relative to the windway and there's a lot of daylight visable under the blade. In that case, I wouldn't try it, because then it usually makes matters worse, rather than better.

The biggest problem with many of these whistles is that the soundblade isn't ideally positioned in relation to the windway. Ideally, when you sight into the mouthpiece, looking at the soundblade through the windway, you'll see the blade edge with just a sliver of space above the windway floor, so most of the area of the windway is covered by the soundblade, with 1/32" or so of daylight showing under the blade. On some whistles (Clarke Original, Shaw, for example) this is easy to correct, but on the whistles with plastic heads, it's harder to do.

Enlarging toneholes will make the note sharper, not flatter, especially if you enlage the top of the hole. To make a note flatter, take a piece of cellophane tape and cover part of the tonehole. This works very well. You can also use tape (I like to use aluminum foil tape, but electrician's tape or cellophane tape wrapped thick will work) to lengthen the tube slightly if the bell note is sharp.

I think that about covers it.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[sad-seamonster]

You know i looked all over for the search feature before i posted and didn't see it. Thank you Jerry that is an informative post.!

[Jerry Freeman]

You know i looked all over for the search feature before i posted and didn't see it. Thank you Jerry that is an informative post.!

It's just as well. If you had done a search and read a lot of posts, you would have a lot to try to piece together. And there have been some refinements and insights over the last few months that might not be clear from past posts. I wanted to make as thorough an overview as possible, at least of what I know about, which I've emailed to Dale, suggesting that it be added to the main board.

One thing I did leave out, which I've never done, is the poster putty tweak for a sharp bell note. If you stick a little ball of poster putty inside the bottom of the tube, it flattens the bell note, so you can do that as an alternative to lengthening the end of the tube by wrapping it with tape.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[brewerpaul]

Darn it Jerry! I was gonna say all that

[Wombat]

Darn it Jerry! I was gonna say all that

Since when have your whistles needed tweaking, Paul?

[MarshMan]

[ Thread revival, and extended quote removed. - Mod ]

Hi Jerry,
I see that you repeatedly use the word 'sandpaper' here [above], when you clearly must mean emery paper? Sandpaper is not meant to be used on metal of course.

[MTGuru]

I see that you repeatedly use the word 'sandpaper' here [above], when you clearly must mean emery paper? Sandpaper is not meant to be used on metal of course.

Actually, he's talking about sanding plastic bits of the fipple, not metal. So sandpaper is correct.

[MarshMan]

I see that you repeatedly use the word 'sandpaper' here [above], when you clearly must mean emery paper? Sandpaper is not meant to be used on metal of course.

Actually, he's talking about sanding plastic bits of the fipple, not metal. So sandpaper is correct.

OK, but personally I'd also use emery on plastic. It's a matter of choice I suppose.
Max
p.s. I'd meant to say, thanks for a superb synopsis of whistle tuning!

[Jerry Freeman]

Except when there's loose plastic inside that scraped off the sides of the socket when the whistle was assembled at the factory, I haven't found it makes much difference, if any, to go around and tidy up the little molding irrregularities. I do anyway, as it just takes a few seconds and looks better.

As it happens, for many years, the Bb Generations that came from the cavity designated by two marks at the bottom of the socket had a "defect" caused by molten plastic gooshing out at the end of the soundblade, extending the soundblade. In fact, these were superior whistles. I'm sure many people trimmed off that "excess" plastic, not knowing they were actually degrading the whistle. A couple of years ago, that feature disappeared, which would indicate Generation repaired the mold to correct the "defect."

I've also not found blunting the soundblade to make much difference.

The most important things I've found are, lower the bottom of the soundblade so it's even with the top of the windway floor, fill under the windway, and scrape a bevel onto the windway floor exit where it goes into the voicing chamber.

[Jerry Freeman]

"Sandpaper" doesn't really mean anything nowadays. It's become a generic term for any kind of abrasive paper. Used to be, there was such a thing as sandpaper, usually labeled "quartz paper," but it's been replaced by aluminum oxide and silicon carbide paper. Quartz paper doesn't hold up under any kind of use, but it's especially unsuitable for metal, which is why there's the old lore that sandpaper isn't suitable for metal, and emery paper should be used instead. Emery paper's still around, but it isn't used as much as it used to be.

Aluminum oxide and silicon carbide paper are both suitable for all kinds of materials, including metal. Silicon carbide paper is usually made as "wet or dry" paper, which means it can be used with water to keep it from filling with debris. However, aluminum oxide is fine for metal, too. Aluminum oxide is the second hardest natural material after diamond. Sapphires and rubies are aluminum oxide. Silicon carbide is an artificial material harder than aluminum oxide but softer than diamond.

[MarshMan]

Interesting to get the American take on this. I tend to forget that this is a predominantly an American site. In the UK things are a bit different, inasmuch as sandpaper is definitely defined and labelled as sandpaper, and is as such used only for wood. Emery paper is also still separately defined as emery, and I have large quantities in my workshop. Yes, silicon carbide is beginning to have a large share of the market, being as it has a wider, less differentiated usefulness. At my age I'll never have to buy any of the latter because I've got so much sandpaper and emery paper in stock.
My apologies if I jumped in without thinking.
Cheers
Max