Tres wrote:
One reason this whislte sounds good may be that, from the image, it appears to be an older style Generation head, like my old Bb. These are very good whistles. The newer ones don't seem to be as good.
Tres
There's no noticable difference in quality between the old and new C as far as I can see (one of the Cs I have is a newer model and it certainly is, untweaked, no worse player than the one used in the recording)
I don't think it is really a quality issue per se. I do think the change in fipple design did make a difference. It may not be a huge difference, and every now and then, one may get a good new one that competes favorably with a so so older one. However, I think one is much more likely to find the legendary "Good Generation" with the older fipple design.
Tres wrote:
One reason this whislte sounds good may be that, from the image, it appears to be an older style Generation head, like my old Bb. These are very good whistles. The newer ones don't seem to be as good.
Tres
There's no noticable difference in quality between the old and new C as far as I can see (one of the Cs I have is a newer model and it certainly is, untweaked, no worse player than the one used in the recording)
I don't think it is really a quality issue per se. I do think the change in fipple design did make a difference. It may not be a huge difference, and every now and then, one may get a good new one that competes favorably with a so so older one. However, I think one is much more likely to find the legendary "Good Generation" with the older fipple design.
Tres
I think the story is more complicated than Peter makes out - there are differences in the different keys.
The older B-flats were almost invariably perfect whistles - I defy you to find me a good one straight of the box today. All the ones I've tried in the past few years have had a fuzzy and raspy upper octave.
The old Cs were great and most of the new Cs are very good. Except you can't usually unglue their heads without breaking them.
Old Ds were great too. Today's Ds need to be tried. Complete duds are rare, most are OK, esp. with minimal tweaking. For example they all sound better immediately once you reposition the head so that they are no longer sharp. Very good ones can be found too. Funnily enough some heads that sound so-so on a D body sound fabulous on an Eb body.
That said there is a lot in what Peter says about how you blow them. I had a student complaining bitterly about her Generation whistle and indeed it did sound horrible when she was playing it. So I tried it and found it to be a really nice one, told her she was lucky to have found it.
Tell us something.: I used to be a regular then I took up the bassoon. Bassoons don't have a lot of chiff. Not really, I have always been a drummer, and my C&F years were when I was a little tired of the drums. Now I'm back playing drums. I mist the C&F years, though.
StevieJ wrote:[That said there is a lot in what Peter says about how you blow them. I had a student complaining bitterly about her Generation whistle and indeed it did sound horrible when she was playing it. So I tried it and found it to be a really nice one, told her she was lucky to have found it.
And this is what truly amazes me. It would seem that it's a pretty simple matter to blow into a whistle and make it play, just like if I press the C key on a piano and a virtuoso pressed the C key on a piano, it should sound exactly the same. But it's not. We've seen it. And it never ceases to make me shake my head in disbelief.
"Meon an phobail a thogail trid an chultur"
(The people’s spirit is raised through culture)
Tell us something.: I used to be a regular then I took up the bassoon. Bassoons don't have a lot of chiff. Not really, I have always been a drummer, and my C&F years were when I was a little tired of the drums. Now I'm back playing drums. I mist the C&F years, though.
And I think this is what my teacher was referring to when he told me during one of my first lessons, that I had an 'old' sound. I said I'd spent a lot of time just listening to myself play to try to make it sound good.
"Meon an phobail a thogail trid an chultur"
(The people’s spirit is raised through culture)
StevieJ wrote:
I think the story is more complicated than Peter makes out - there are differences in the different keys.
.
I didn't mean more than I said really, the difference between the old and new C seems minimal and doesn't influence the playing characteristics much, if at all. Now, D's that's another story but we were talking about the C specifically.
StevieJ wrote:The older B-flats were almost invariably perfect whistles - I defy you to find me a good one straight of the box today. All the ones I've tried in the past few years have had a fuzzy and raspy upper octave.
I acctually had a very nice new design Gen Bb (one of my first 10 whistles) that was extremely good right of the shelf. It had an almost flutelike sound, good balance and an easy player all together. I ruined it by tweaking (I had a period when I had to tweak everything because I'd had some success with other whistles), it never became half as good as it first was. Granted, I've never found another one like it, but if there's one there should be more of them.
The Bb Generations are extremely variable. Just amazingly so. There are several variations I run into with them, and it takes different tweaking tactics with each variation. Each of the other whistles I do, there are specific adjustments I make, and they're the same adjustments for all the whistles of that type.
Jerry Freeman wrote:The Bb Generations are extremely variable. Just amazingly so. There are several variations I run into with them, and it takes different tweaking tactics with each variation. Each of the other whistles I do, there are specific adjustments I make, and they're the same adjustments for all the whistles of that type.
Best wishes,
Jerry
I don't know whether you got a good one or a "finicky" one to work before you sent me mine, but the one you sent me tweaked - sings very well indeed.
It was well worth the little extra expense and in my mind very comparable to another expensive Bb I have. The expensive one is sweet but soft, and does not have the power of my Generation. The one thing I continue to appreciate with the Generation is that they increase the bore width as well as the length with the lower keys. This applies as well to the Generation Tweaked C whistle I have.
This makes a much more expressive whistle in my mind!
Ok...as I mentioned I have a few generation whistles. I'm not happy with any of them as compared to other cheap whistles I own...so...I'm looking to tweak the Generations I own. I went to the C&F Tweaking Inexpensive Whistle Page and saw only how to tweak whistles which "'flip up' way too easily." Well my generations do not "flip up" easily enough. It's very annoying as it takes a significant amount more breath to play upper octives. So...how do I tweak in this case?
Pete. The tweaking instructions for Gen style whistles on the mainsite makes the whistles better overall if you're successful. I've tried it on Gen style whistles and eventually added a few own tweaks as well with great effect. None of my whistles became harder to play in the second octave.
I just tweaked my first whistle. I tweaked my Generation C whistle, which did not “flip up” easily enough.
Removing the fipple was a bit difficult. When I was finished with the whole procedure, although it proved not to be a problem, I realized slight cracks had developed with in the fipple. Also, once the fipple was removed the whistle body was coated in some sort of thin plastic, like a decal. I tried to remove all of this decal material (which covered the entire whistle, inside and out) as I could. The result was the removal of the Generation ‘mark’ (something I certainly don’t care about). I then dripped wax from a lit candle into the fipple and filled the empty space up to the ‘whistle hole’ (from where the sound emanates). I then put the fipple back onto the whistle body and viola!
The whistle is now far superior to what it was before I made the tweak. The whistle responds to a very acceptable level (viz.) it is now on par with the Oak and Acorn whistles I own. The whistle has lost a bit of its chiff and has a more mellow sound. All together...very pleasant. It is a very playable whistle now. The cracks in the whislte fipple proved to be a non issue.
Congrats Pete. Now keep experimenting with the tweaking, sand the blade and the air tunnel and see if you can improve it even further. Of course, there is a risk that you'll ruin the whistle in doing so, but some of my own tweaked Generations are far superior (to my taste at least) to my Oak whistles, haven't tried Acorn. It's great fun to mess around with tweaking anyway.
This thread really got me thinking about cheap whistles and their playability off the rack. I decided to buy four Gen-style cheapies that I'd never played before, or at least never played untweaked, and see how I liked them straight out of the box. I ordered a Gen C, which I've never played before, a D which I've only played Jerry-tweaked, a Walton's Mellow D and a Feadog D, neither of which I've played before. They arrived today. I played each for about a minute or two at work when they arrived and then for maybe five minutes or more at home this evening.
My initial impressions. The Gen C is a beauty, right from first toot I liked the tone and balance and I had no control problems at all, not even minor ones. All the others gave me minor control problems but each should be easily playable without any tweaking at all. The Gen D was a bit shrill in the second octave and squeaked on a couple of notes but I sorted out both problems pretty quickly. The Feadog presented similar minor problems and had less of a sweet sound. The Walton's sounded lovely but needed a bit of getting used to in order to flip into the second octave on demand. These aren't lasting problems. These were problems pretty much sorted out in the first five minutes or so of playing if not earlier. I haven't checked to see if the Gen D is sharp but the fix for that is obvious if, as I suspect, it is.
I then got out the untweaked Gen Eb which I used to describe as unplayable. As I mentioned earlier, I can certainly play it now, albeit with some difficulty. It was still much harder to control than any of my new whistles but when it does play nicely the tone is sweeter and brighter than the Jerry-tweaked Eb that gives me no trouble and which I play regularly and like a lot. Maybe I should try my luck with a new Eb off the shelf.
My two cents; I've played Gens for at least 30 years, probably more.
I never knew what I was doing, but they were lovely and sweet.
I remember one I bought in 81 that I still dream of. I stopped
in the early 90s.
I started playing whistles again maybe six years ago, but seriously,
with lessons, workshops, hours of practice. And I began buying
Gens again, quite a few. They squawk and are hard to control.
I am now much better than I was before, and I disbelieve
that this omprovement accounts for the problem. So, IMO, Gens
are no longer as good as they used to be.
I lately purchased a good Bb and two ds which are
dissapointing. It's a pity. I miss the ones I had.
Today I took off the head of my Generation high G and put some clay in the cavity. Sanded the blade a little and tried it next to my Korg tuner.
It is right on and in tune with itself. Not so with the F and Eb. Those two
I had to file the holes up into an oval shape to get them in tune, and then they were fine. But this is what I like about Generation. They are cheap enough to experiment with tweeking and when done they sound great.
