New style whistle heads

[Terry McGee]

Having been away from the whistle field for around 50 years, I note some changes. In particular, I'm interested in the difference between the kind of head used by say Killarney whistles, and the kind of head we see with say Setanta. You can see the two types illustrated at:

https://killarneywhistle.com/?gclid=Cjw ... UQQAvD_BwE
and
http://www.setanta-whistles.com/store/c ... _C%29.html

The main apparent difference is that the "cover" on the Setanta type whistle continues quite some way past the window opening, whereas in the earlier design it stops at the start of the window. My question is what benefit does the later design bring to the player, and to the maker?

[pancelticpiper]

Good question!

The Setanta has a style that's been around for some time, used by several makers.

Here, note that MK and Reyburn both use that style. The MK's is squared off but the Reyburn's is angled.

Also note that Burke's is in between, not abruptly ending at the end of the windway but sort of tapering down.

What having the outer tube continue down and curve around a bit below the blade might do is simulate the blister that Generations have below the blade.



Here is an Overton on the left and an Alba on the right. The Overton has a ramp machined below the blade.



Here you can see the "blister" below the blade on Generation heads.

Do any Low Whistles, or any whistles besides Generation, have that feature?

[Narzog]

So two things on the Killarney vs Sentanta.

I've heard, and generally believe, that having a taller wall around the windway can help have a stronger low end. I believe this is why Copeland had the thing that sticks up around the windway. But that also could have been to reduce effects of wind. I believe Nathaniel Dowel has some videos testing this and it seems to be true.

Thing 2, and this one may be completely wrong, is looks like the Killarney uses a thicker piece of brass that is almost as tall as the black delrin end. Meaning they machine the end down to fit the delrin over it. So in the end its barely a shorter windway wall.

So to me in the end its two ways to achieve a similar result with a different look. when I was trying to get into whistle making, a big thing I had issues with was trying to make something unique. I didn't want to make another clone or lookalike. and with the seemingly limited ways of easily creating a whistle, that becomes hard. There ends up beign a few easy ways that are really efficient to make a mouthpiece, and those are what most makers use.

[Terry McGee]

Good question!

The Setanta has a style that's been around for some time, used by several makers.

Yes, and I guess my question is why. What does it have to offer over the earlier approach? Which I understand dates back to John Sindt?

Here, note that MK and Reyburn both use that style. The MK's is squared off but the Reyburn's is angled.

Also note that Burke's is in between, not abruptly ending at the end of the windway but sort of tapering down.

What having the outer tube continue down and curve around a bit below the blade might do is simulate the blister that Generations have below the blade.



Here is an Overton on the left and an Alba on the right. The Overton has a ramp machined below the blade.

Thanks pancelticpiper, plenty of food for thought there.

Now, we can see that the Overton has been made by squashing the round tubing of the body into a square in the area of the window and above. So some kind of transition between round and square is inevitable, and a slope is much safer and easier to make, and less aerodynamically disruptive than any sharper transition. We can see signs of the slope on the sides as well as on the top. So I'd be inclined to think that is not so much an active part of the system as an artefact of construction. And that it is sited far enough back from the ramp as to not take an active role. (It could be argued that this is the approach Clarke should have taken instead of their dimpled approach, possibly not as far back as 1846, but at least sometime since!)

And if that's correct, when we look at the Alba, the Mk and the Reyburn, we can probably safely conclude that the back end of the slots are far enough back from the ramp that they again don't matter. Hence it wouldn't matter if that back end was rounded, ramped or left vertical - it's safely out of the game.

Here you can see the "blister" below the blade on Generation heads.

Do any Low Whistles, or any whistles besides Generation, have that feature?

Yeah, I've always found that to be a puzzling feature, and no, I'm not aware of anyone else using it. But again, based on the argument above, can we conclude that it's far enough away from the ramp to not be significant? That perhaps its a visual or constructional feature, rather than an acoustic or aerodynamic one. In an interesting way, it's kind of the inverse of the Alba. Where The Generation has a bump, the Alba has a cavity. You'd think they both can't be right, unless it doesn't matter.

Tempting to find a pair of old Generations that play the same, and pare the lump off one of them. The difficulty would be finding two old Generations that play the same! Or perhaps easier, take a whistle without a bump, and stick one on it. Dissect a frozen pea and work quickly?

[Terry McGee]

So two things on the Killarney vs Sentanta.

I've heard, and generally believe, that having a taller wall around the windway can help have a stronger low end. I believe this is why Copeland had the thing that sticks up around the windway. But that also could have been to reduce effects of wind. I believe Nathaniel Dowel has some videos testing this and it seems to be true.

Around the windway, or the window, Narzog? It's an interesting hypothesis. If so, the Copeland in pancelticpiper's post should suffer by comparison to his Alba.

Thing 2, and this one may be completely wrong, is looks like the Killarney uses a thicker piece of brass that is almost as tall as the black delrin end. Meaning they machine the end down to fit the delrin over it. So in the end its barely a shorter windway wall.

I can confirm that in the Killarney, the front end of the brass body is turned down to a smaller diameter under the Delrin cover. That I assume is to set the desired height of the windway (set by the size of the bore and the plug below, and the size of the turned down brass end above.) But then the Delrin cover is actually a larger diameter than the adjacent brass head, so that would act to increase the height above the window.

So to me in the end its two ways to achieve a similar result with a different look. when I was trying to get into whistle making, a big thing I had issues with was trying to make something unique. I didn't want to make another clone or lookalike. and with the seemingly limited ways of easily creating a whistle, that becomes hard. There ends up beign a few easy ways that are really efficient to make a mouthpiece, and those are what most makers use.

Is this a possible significant difference? In the Killarney, the ramp is relatively long, as the head body material is quite thick there. In the Setanta and the whistles pancelticpiper drew our attention to, the ramps are very short, as they level out after having reached the top of the windway level, only halfway to the surface. Interesting....

[kkrell]

I'm having trouble understanding just what area you all are concerned with. Is there anywhere on either of these 2 diagrams that you're referring to? I'm looking for some consistency in terminology, if possible.

[JackL]

Those are great diagrams - first time I have seen the terminology all pulled together at all, much less so clearly.

[Terry McGee]

But, unfortunately for our discussion, don't come up to the current period. I'm guessing the top image relates to earlier whistles, though I'm not sure exactly what.

The lower image relates fairly well to the Killarney (Sindt?) style of whistle. The aqua bits are the brass body of the head. The purple bits at the left are the top and bottom of the Delrin cover. The arrows marked "Roof" should really have been taken through the top purple bit so they mark the roof of the windway - they got it right in the upper drawing.

What we don't have here is a drawing of the Setenta-style head. I'm guessing it's pretty similar to that lower drawing, excepting that the purple cover extends well to the right, well past the window and ramp, perhaps to about the letter U in Labium. But with a slot in the top of it to reveal the window, ramp and some of the body below.

Note also the upper drawing gives Duct and Windway as alternatives, whereas in the lower drawing, the Duct appears to be pointing at the rectangular hole I'd call the Window.

I'd definitely agree that our discussions would benefit from access to a set of drawings covering the ages, and a well-thrashed-out set of terms! I alas have not the graphical skills needed to undertake such a task. Happy to work with anyone who has!

[Narzog]

Around the windway, or the window, Narzog? It's an interesting hypothesis. If so, the Copeland in pancelticpiper's post should suffer by comparison to his Alba.

This is a Copeland in the way I was talkign about, with the weird shield thing going up. I meant the window not the windway.
https://reverb.com/item/13241862-set-of ... g-c-d-used

So to me in the end its two ways to achieve a similar result with a different look. when I was trying to get into whistle making, a big thing I had issues with was trying to make something unique. I didn't want to make another clone or lookalike. and with the seemingly limited ways of easily creating a whistle, that becomes hard. There ends up beign a few easy ways that are really efficient to make a mouthpiece, and those are what most makers use.

Is this a possible significant difference? In the Killarney, the ramp is relatively long, as the head body material is quite thick there. In the Setanta and the whistles pancelticpiper drew our attention to, the ramps are very short, as they level out after having reached the top of the windway level, only halfway to the surface. Interesting....

It depends on what counts as significant. The whistles are definitely different. I just mean that the two processes can both end with a similar result of windway width heights and wall height around the window. Theres other differences that can be had with the different methods. But the two methods can get a pretty similar result.

A note about window wall height. I believe it does something to the sound, but that doesnt mean its a big factor. Goldies, which have a very short window wall height because they don't have a top piece that goes around (see Richards Goldie Vs Alba pic in his first post) still have a excellent low end. So it doesnt seem to be a problem. But there may be a slight gain from extra tall walls, like burkes. But those could be getting their extra strong low end from other factors, like having a tall windway.

[Terry McGee]

Ah, I see what you mean, Narzog. We're talking The Great Wall of China here. But only in the lower-pitched pair. Interesting....



Ah, and I think you've answered a question I probably posed elsewhere - are there tapered whistles where the section above the the tuning slide is also tapered. That appears to be the case with these whistles. Though the degree of taper is relatively mild compared to some whistles (eg the Clarkes?). So much to wonder about....

[paddler]

I think there are at least a couple of independent things going on here. One I would term a "chimney height" kind of effect.
If you view the window as being analogous to the embouchure hole on a flute, then it is easy to see the walls either side of
it, as in the Copeland whistles, as potentially having the same effect as adding a lip plate to a flute. They increase the chimney
height of the embouchure hole. Obviously, in a whistle, you can't do it all the way around without interfering with the air flow
over the blade, so you end up with something equivalent to a 3/4 lip plate. On a flute increasing chimney height (within bounds)
can positively impact tone. I don't see why whistles should not behave similarly.

I think you even see this implemented on Syndt whistles. Ever wonder why he uses such a heavy chunk of brass at the head which
throws off the weight balance of the whistle? Well, take a close look at the increase in chimney height it allows around the window.
If you try making them by machining a smaller rod for the head they just don't sound as good.

The other issue, I think, has more to do with ease of construction. I think this is the case with the Setanta. Here I think it is just
a simpler construction technique to use a single outer tube to hold the head to the upper part of the body. A lot of the simplest
methods for constructing whistles involve making all parts from as small a number of concentric tubes as possible. Here the outer
tube is quite thin walled, and the part of it that sits below the ramp is so far south of the ramp that I doubt it have any acoustic
influence. It probably does help hold everything together tightly with great alignment though.

I think the second "ramp" in the Overton/Goldie design is simply a matter of tidying up the exterior around the transition from
squared off head to cylindrical body. My guess is that the location of this transition has more to do with where the internal bore
constriction (caused by the lower cross sectional area of the squared off part) ends and the cylindrical body bore begins. This
point inside the bore is acoustically relevant, but I'd be surprised if the second ramp on the outside is.

[Terry McGee]

Interesting and plausible-sounding hypothesis there, Paddler. Certainly, a flute with a too-thin head wall (eg one made from electrical conduit without the addition of a lip plate) is a dismal sounding thing.

And, perhaps from the image of the three whistles above, we can assume this is more important for the lower whistles than the treble D? It would be possible and interesting to take a low whistle without such a wall, and fabricate an enclosure for the window, to see what difference it makes and how significant the difference is. I'd expect some flattening at least, and so it might require retuning after adding the enclosure before we could hear/see the benefits. That gets harder!

Or of course we could just bung the question onto the end of Tunborough's Christmas Holiday To-Do List? Would you expect your whistle model to be aware of the effect on tone of window depth, Tunborough? From memory, the Clarke has only the 0.3mm thickness of the tinplate to work with.

[paddler]

This kind of begs the question of what we mean by "tone".

Is it a question of volume, say increasing the volume of the lower notes, or trying to make the volume more balanced between octaves ?

Or is it a question of "quality of tone" in the Helmholtz sense, where we are interested in the presence and relative strength of partial frequencies in each note,
and whether the mix makes the instrument sound the way we want it to sound? The latter, of course, is an aesthetic choice that is unlikely to be quantifiable.

Can Tunborough's models really shed any light on this? I thought the main output was concerned with tuning of notes, which is something quite distinct from
either of the above.

[Terry McGee]

Good questions, and hopefully Tunborough will address them.

I wondered if the Window depth (if that's a good way to talk about it) might have a discernible effect on Q, the resonance quality factor? If so, is there an optimum, and does it depend on the pitch of the whistle, and maybe the bore diameter and other dimensions of the Window? Is there a maximum depth one shouldn't exceed, for risk of getting stuffy? Or is that taken care of by the fact that there is a way out of the Window "enclosure" via the Ramp?

So many questions! Can't you imagine them coming up back in the cave 30,000 years ago while they're carving mammoth tusks into whistles...

[Terry McGee]

Up at the start, I'd asked what benefit does the later design (eg Setanta-style) bring to the player, and to the maker?

Focusing on the maker for a moment, is it fair to say it brings added complication, in that there are now two parts that need slotting and aligning:
- the front end of the body section, where the slot creates the width of the Windway, and
- the slot in the extended cover needed to expose the Window?

If that's the case, the maker would need to be rewarded for the extra work with an improvement in performance. So we're not just chasing moonbeams here?