Narzog wrote: ↑Wed Aug 25, 2021 7:40 pm
My main beef with the cheepie whistles is there's no consistency...
What I would love is if they were to make a new model of Generation and Feadog...to up quality control to make sure the tuning and stuff is good. $30 a pop. Would effortlessly compete with top makers.
After playing a large number of expensive modern whistles (some a thousand dollars) I still feel that the finest whistles are the very best Generations.
As I've said many times over the years, I had a crack at an unopened box straight from the factory of 24 Generation D's.
There were two which played at the very highest level, easily on par with a Sindt or anything else you name.
And then a few that played well. And a broad mediocre middle. And a couple which were utterly unplayable, having no 2nd octave whatsoever, making only squeaking noises when you tried to overblow the low octave.
There seemed to be no quality control at all.
It made me wonder:
1) What if Generation ONLY sold those top two whistles, and binned the rest? They could probably sell them for $100 each, and gain a reputation as one of the world's finest whistle makers.
2) What if Generation ONLY sold the top ten whistles, and binned the rest? They could probably sell them for $40 each, and gain a reputation of a solid reliable whistle maker.
But no, Generation sends everything out the door, the superb and the unplayable alike, for a few dollars each, and has the reputation they deserve.
A perhaps fitting coda is when, shortly afterwards, a new student showed up with no whistle. I told him the music shop down the street sold Generations, and he zipped over there and bought a D. He didn't try it, just grabbed one at random. It was superb. (I visited that shop fairly regularly and always played over the Generations they had to hand...in ten years I'd never found a good one there, in any key.)