A Little Sneak Preview (Updated With Sound Clip)

boomerang · Post by **boomerang** » Fri Oct 24, 2003 9:24 pm

Gary,
Congrats mate,
Both the whistle and the playing are lovely, i have heard several of your clips now and i have to say i am impressed with your playing and obvious feeling for the tunes you play, ornamentation in appropriate places, not overdone, good breath control, and the tone that only comes with feeling and practice, and passion for your craft
Keep up the good work,
regards
David

AnnaDMartinez · Post by **AnnaDMartinez** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 2:05 pm

Good looking and nice sounding whistle, Gary!

cj · Post by cj » Sun Oct 26, 2003 5:09 pm

Nyyyce!

Blackbeer · Post by **Blackbeer** » Sun Oct 26, 2003 7:09 pm

Gary, that was a sweat rendition of a tune I just can`t stand. Beautifully played and I will take one in Eb and D thank you very much.
Darn nice whistle my friend.

Tom

Whistlin'Dixie · Post by **Whistlin'Dixie** » Mon Oct 27, 2003 8:20 pm

Gary: I'm with Tom on that !!! You can send me a D (Gosh, my Rose will be mad at me)

M

serpent · Post by **serpent** » Mon Oct 27, 2003 10:50 pm

raindog1970 wrote:
jonharl wrote:Is the mouthpiece similar to a Sindt? (that would be a good thing)
Yes, the mouthpiece is very similar to that of a Sindt.

O.M.G. From the looks of things, you hand-form the blade. I know that Paul Busman does that too, and it takes a LONG time, and that time is figured into the price, I'm sure. How the heck do you keep that under the aegis of "inexpensive", or do you intend to? Even with milling the blade, there is some handwork I have to do to maintain precision, and I don't do it for free.

Additionally, the ratio of window width to length seems inordinately high, if the photo is to be believed. Assuming ASTM standard 1/2" Schedule 40 CPVC pipe as a starting point, I'm looking at a window that's about 0.25" wide, but only about 0.19" deep. Ordinarily, that ratio would pretty effectively prevent your bell note from sounding without trying to immediately kick up to the second octave. Is there some magic going on here that defies Bernoulli?

Tell us more about your manufacturing processes! Where'd you buy the magic wand, Gary??

Cheers,
serpent

raindog1970 · Post by **raindog1970** » Tue Oct 28, 2003 12:01 pm

serpent wrote:O.M.G. From the looks of things, you hand-form the blade. I know that Paul Busman does that too, and it takes a LONG time, and that time is figured into the price, I'm sure. How the heck do you keep that under the aegis of "inexpensive", or do you intend to? Even with milling the blade, there is some handwork I have to do to maintain precision, and I don't do it for free.

Additionally, the ratio of window width to length seems inordinately high, if the photo is to be believed. Assuming ASTM standard 1/2" Schedule 40 CPVC pipe as a starting point, I'm looking at a window that's about 0.25" wide, but only about 0.19" deep. Ordinarily, that ratio would pretty effectively prevent your bell note from sounding without trying to immediately kick up to the second octave. Is there some magic going on here that defies Bernoulli?

Tell us more about your manufacturing processes! Where'd you buy the magic wand, Gary??

Cheers,
serpent

Everything is either milled or turned on my lathe... I do very little work by hand, which allows me to keep my tolerances very low.
In fact, the only thing I do by hand is to smooth the edges of the finger holes and the bottom edge of the lip radius with a jewellers file.
The pics I've posted are terribly fuzzy, and don't show the details very well at all... thanks to my cheap digital camera.

I'm not too up on the highly technical aspects of what makes whistles work, and a great deal of what I know was passed on to me from others... and a lot of it just came from good old fashioned trial and error.
Of course, all the challenges of learning just make the end results of your efforts even more rewarding!

vaporlock · Post by **vaporlock** » Tue Oct 28, 2003 3:51 pm

Raindog...
Beautiful sound and well executed! Danny Boy may be a bit overplayed, but I think it's a perfect 'demo' tune that takes the whistle all the way to the top. Whenever I hear it, I wait in fearful anticipation of the reach up to high B near then end. Sounds like there's nothing to fear from the upper register of your new whistles, though...well done!

I recently purchased a mill/drill combo machine. Paycheck by paycheck I'm aquiring the cutters/tooling/misc junk to get it doing what I want it to do. Just learning the proper operation of the machine is daunting enough, let alone actually getting good with it

Good luck,
Eric

Eliezer · Post by **Eliezer** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 12:33 pm

Any chance you could post a picture of the OTHER side of the mouthpiece -- the part that goes into your mouth?

I don't happen to like short Susato-like mouthpieces. The longer the better, IMHO.

ErikT · Post by **ErikT** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 12:58 pm

Hey Bill,

Here's a picture of a handful of whistles with the ratio you describe. It is pretty common.

byrd · Post by **byrd** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 1:13 pm

raindog1970 wrote:<snip>
The pics I've posted are terribly fuzzy, and don't show the details very well at all... thanks to my cheap digital camera.
I'm not too up on the highly technical aspects of what makes whistles work, and a great deal of what I know was passed on to me from others... and a lot of it just came from good old fashioned trial and error.
Of course, all the challenges of learning just make the end results of your efforts even more rewarding!

Gary, send me a whistle and I'll be happy to photograph it for you and send it back, if you like. I spent 12 years as a commercial photog and have high-end digital equipment to work with. Email me if you're interested.
Cheers,
Dale

JessieK · Post by **JessieK** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 1:23 pm

Sounds great, Gary!

serpent · Post by **serpent** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 1:27 pm

ErikT wrote:Hey Bill,

Here's a picture of a handful of whistles with the ratio you describe. It is pretty common.

True, Eric. I make some like that myself. I wasn't clear enough. The width-to-depth ratio also includes factoring in the width of the airway to the diameter and thickness of the tube. All of those whistles in the pic are using (relatively) thin tube and a window width that's a large fraction of the tube width. Gary's (and mine, and Stacy's, and Paul's) use a windway that's a smaller fraction of the tube width. The narrower the windway gets WRT the tube diameter, the deeper (longer) the opening from the fipple plug end to the blade must be for decent sound and octave controllability, by and large. Not having seen the details of Gary's mouthpiece, I was just observing that in general, the ratio looked reversed. It obviously works; I just wonder what other details are different from others I know.

BTW, I sent you email about your milling goodies!

Cheers,
serpent

raindog1970 · Post by **raindog1970** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 4:52 pm

Eliezer wrote:Any chance you could post a picture of the OTHER side of the mouthpiece -- the part that goes into your mouth?

Go to http://webpages.charter.net/raindog1970/ for a look at all my fuzzy digital photos!

byrd wrote:Gary, send me a whistle and I'll be happy to photograph it for you and send it back, if you like. I spent 12 years as a commercial photog and have high-end digital equipment to work with.

Thank you very kindly for the offer... I just may need the services of a professional photographer if I ever decide to put up an official website for my whistles.
That will most likely be a good while later though, if ever at all... they're trying to kill me with required overtime at my 'real' job these days, with no relief in sight!

ErikT · Post by **ErikT** » Thu Oct 30, 2003 5:08 pm

Oh, and how rude of me. I failed to mention congratulations on a fine whistle, Gary!

Erik

p.s. Serp, I'm assuming that you sent the e-mail to the other Eric - aka vaporlock