Generation tweak question...

Whistle
1

I got my first whistle, and by chance it’s Generation D (not Dixon Trad, yet). :smiley:
Now i like it because it’s pretty responsive due to thin wall i guess, but i dont like the fact that it squeaks a bit and i need to control my breathing constantly for lower tones, thus making my favorite airs tricky to play. So i think i’m going for broke and i’ll try to tweak it.

Ok, so i read almost all of the Jerry Freeman’s posts, and it’s all clear.
But i have one question.
What’s the point of the U shaped bulge that spreads over almost entire slope of the fipple blade? Should i file it down, or does it have it’s purpose???

2

Aerodynamics is very similar to Hydrodynamics. If you can imagine what a flowing stream of water will do when it encounters the bulge, you will start to understand.

The airstream must cross the open window and strike the ramp just above the edge (most of it anyway). It then travels up the ramp and also pushes the inert (stationary) air out of the way. The Bulge spreads the airstream out to the sides in a fan shape to reduce build-up on the ramp. If the air is not redirected to the sides, it will slow the response time.

In simple terms, if you flatten the bulge, the whistle will not respond to your breath as fast as before.

3

Cool, thanks. :slight_smile:

How come that the other whistles don’t have it? :confused:

4

Has anyone filed off the bulge and seen what happens?

5

I have done that some time ago. I don’t remember anything great or bad that happened.

6

Although others have occasionally reported that adding or removing a bump from the soundblade ramp makes a difference, I’ve never been able to detect it. However, I’m not the fastest player, and others may be better equipped to evaluate the effect. The most responsive whistle I work with, the Blackbird, has no bump.

My advice would be to leave the bump alone. I don’t know of anything that might be gained by removing it.

Best wishes,
Jerry

7

Oh, and another one…I noticed that the lowest part of the blade, the one that is about a quarter of mm wide, has a different slope (narrower) that the rest of the blade. And i noticed that Clarkes’ doesn’t have that, their blade has the same shape all the way. :confused:
If i decide to modify the blade to reduce the space under it, should i make it’s slope narrower?

8

Your question is rather vague Dain…Modifications to the blade and voicing can have many outcomes.

It is the job of the voicing to generate oscillating sound waves. The waveform is called a “Von Karman vortex street”. The shape of the labium edge and the ramp surface are used to create this waveform from the airstream. The Labium is an Airfoil and can be modified just like the shape of any aircraft wing to the designers ideal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vortex-street-animation.gif

The initial sharp angle on the leading edge you speak of, is used to force the airstream upward and create the initial “curl” of the vortex. This phenomenon is found often in nature. here is more info…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Karman_vortex_street

Sometimes a sharp edge married to a strait flat surface beneath the ramp can cause the oscillations to “lock-up” due to a leading edge compression shockwave. Chuck Yeager found this out when the control surfaces on the X-1 locked up on one attempt to break the sound barrier and he had to eject. If you study simple sail and aircraft aerodynamics, you will recieve great insight about acoustics IMO.

9

I’m not quite sure what you mean by “… make its slope narrower?”.

If you modify the soundblade to reduce the space under it, in order to then restore the bevel (the part with a different slope) at the soundblade edge, you’ll have basically two options:

  1. Make the bevel slope steeper so the top of the bevel ends up at the same place on the soundblade ramp as before, or

  2. Keep the bevel angle the same as before, which will cause the bevel to become wider (since you’ve presumably made the soundblade thicker to reduce the space under it (this is called the “step” btw). To accomplish this, you’ll have to remove some material from the end of the ramp nearest the bevel, which may necessitate the new bevel consuming a little of the bump.

I recommend option two. That’s what I do, and it works fine.

Best wishes,
Jerry

10

That’s what i wanted to know, thanks. :wink:

Thanks to Thomas as well for advanced aerodynamics course. :thumbsup:

11

Hi Dain, this is all good information in this thread. But can I suggest to you that the best tweak for you is to do nothing at all?

If you started to play your first fiddle or flute, and it didn’t sound very good with squeaks, and hard to control … Would your first thought be “There must be something wrong with the instrument”? Probably not. And yet this is what often happens with whistles and new players.

You say that your Generation “squeaks a bit and i need to control my breathing constantly for lower tones”. That is normal. Breath control is the first skill you need to develop, and the Gen is an excellent choice to force you to develop the right technique.

If you are thinking about a Dixon Trad or Freeman Blackbird as your next whistle, these whistles require as much or more breath control than a Gen, not less. So if you can’t make your Generation sound good, then you will probably be unhappy with any whistle with the classic trad sound and feel, including Dixon, Blackbird, Feadóg and Sindt.

Yes, there is some variability among Gen whistles. But many of them are decent players without any tweak or modification. My stock Generation D is one of my best whistles. The putty tweak is fine; it tightens the sound and increases the backpressure a bit, but it also thins the tone a bit. It’s a question of personal taste.

As for the “bump” and “ridge” on the Generation, they’re part of the overall design that give the Gen its characteristic sound and response. Every whistle design is an integrated system. Change one element, and you must change the rest accordingly. I have found (unscientifically) that blocking or redirecting the air downstream from the blade affects the upper register more than the lower. The bump and ridge stabilize the harmonics of the high g and above. In fact, the Generation ridge is the origin of my Susato O-ring tweak, which has been a great success in taming the Susato high register.

If you want to know what a Gen might sound like without the bump, try a Feadóg. The overall sound is more aggressive and less “sweet”, and the upper register can be a bit harsh. Yes, there is no bump on the Blackbird. But Jerry also carefully modifies the geometry of the blade, window and windway to achieve a particular result.

Again, I suggest patience with your Gen D. You’ll get other whistles with different characteristics. There’s a reason that so many of the best trad players prefer the Generation sound and feel. Hacking your very first and only Generation seems like a bad idea to me, and may harm your progress in the long run.

My 2 cents …

12

Well, actually, this Gen is squeakier than the whistles that i made and played on. :really:
What’s worse it seems that it’s squeakiest around G’s.
It is more responsive, however, and has that “irish” sound that i mentioned i’d like (and you guys frowned upon me). :smiley:
On the other hand, i checked it on the tuner, and it’s about 40-50 cents sharp in the lower octave (and 20-30 in the higher). No good (it doesn’t bother me, but i cannot play in the band with it).

But, ok, i hasn’t hacked it yet, i just stuffed some epoxy resin under the windway (mild improvement). So i won’t mess around anymore (maybe i’ll try to extend it a bit on the end to see if it’ll fall into order).
I’ll just try harder and wait for that blasted Trad i ordered three months ago.

Cheers. :wink:

13

With a bit of effort you can move the mouthpiece on the tube. Since it plays sharp now, you should position it a bit higher on the tube to tune right, I think that this will be better than extending the tube at the bottom.

14

The head is pushed in too far. But the Generation is a tunable whistle. If it’s sharp, then you need to … tune it. :slight_smile: This means moving the head to the right position. Since Generation heads are glued on, first you need to break the glue seal and remove the glue.

Heat some water to boiling, then let it cool for a few minutes. Insert the head end of the whistle into the water for ~15 seconds, then remove it and dry it. Twist the head until the seal breaks, then gently twist the head off. Use latex gloves if needed for extra grip. If the head is still tight, repeat the hot water treatment; sometimes it takes several tries.

Scrape off any glue residue on the whistle tube and inside the head with a fingernail. Then lubricate the end of the tube with cork grease or something similar (petroleum jelly, lip balm) and replace the head. Now you can use your tuner to position the head for A440.

It’s normal for the 2nd octave to be slightly flat compared to the first octave, as you describe. If you underblow the 1st octave slightly, and push a little harder in the 2nd, you can adjust your breath for the best intonation.

Good luck!

15

It’s a time honored tradition for musicians to customize their instruments.

My very first Gen died in the process.

Later on I selected the very best and very worst Gens I could find and asked an experienced player to “road test” them - The really nice one sounded divine. The really really bad one sounded a little “off”. It demonstrated how far I had to go to get propper control of the instrument. At the time, I could hardly get a note out of the bad one - so I burried it in concrete along with Jerry Freeman’s address in case it got accidentaly un-burried..

I think it’s important that a beginner has an instrument that is not plagued by side-issues. The basic technique is enough to be thinking about. And tweaking can be a fun part of learning.

Death-by-tweaking is a sad by product of the process, but it does hammer the lesson home :wink: