Way back in the day, somewhere around 2000 or 2001, I bought a box of generations and put them all up against my tuner. Many of them had big tuning deviations, using my most steady breath at the time. Some were way scratchy, some squawky, some lovely.
Of course, I'm just a guy, not a machine. And I only had been playing about 5 years at that time, so take that for what it's worth. Many older players have stories about the effort spent picking a "good un" (or tweaking, or getting one gifted to them), so I tend to believe that, at least at one point, there were rare gems to be found among a sea of non-impressive Generations.
That said, while I haven't had the luxury of buying a box of them lately, I've had a more favorable impression of the Generations that I've picked up in recent years. Has Generation quality control gotten better? Hard to say. Have I improved as a whistler in that time? Indubitoubly.
It's not as cut and dried an issue as I would prefer
