Generations - What's the problem?

[Cayden]

Here's another two clips showing two sides of the same whistle, recorded in slightly less rushed circumstances than last night's one. You can hear yet another storm roaring outside the kitchenwindow and the feet on the wooden floor but I hope it isn't too much of a distraction: Taimse im Chodhladh and The Reel of Mullinavat

as a conclusion I like to say the Nickle Generation D I bought yesterday is not the worst of my whistles at all, in fact

it is a very easy playing responsive whistle without particular problems. I did spend five minutes picking one I like but I think that's a wise thing to do whatever whistle you buy, cheap or expensive.

So there you have it, I hope the soundclips make the point more clearly than the endless discussions on the subject.

[dwinterfield]

e-bay Item number: 190066054218

$110.52

Nice playing Peter.

Too bad we can't find any of those nice early Gens at a modest price.

[Jerry Freeman]

So there you have it, I hope the soundclips make the point more clearly than the endless discussions on the subject.

I'm not sure what we've accomplished here.

You reported that you rejected half of the whistles you encountered to identify four out of twelve that seemed good and two that seemed possibly acceptable, but with a hissy G. It's very possible that the six you rejected were all from the same run of injection molding, and there are tens of thousands like them in stores, many of which might have only whistles from that run.

I think you've helped confirm some of the lore, that Generations are quite variable as to quality and you have to hunt for a good one. Many music stores, BTW, won't allow a customer to play all the whistles and then cherry pick the one s/he wants. Any music store that does allow that is providing Generation whistles to the public as a charity, since the eventual result will be that all the ones left will be unacceptable culls and will sit in the store unsold. If the store buys the whistles at a normal wholesale discount and then only sells half of them, there's no profit. It's just a public relations "loss leader."

Best wishes,
Jerry

[Screeeech!!!]

Jerry, are you sure that Generation only have one mould?

Most injection moulding machines making small parts contain several moulds. One machine i used to quality control had twently moulds of the same item in it. Each mould is different, some have flashing in places, others don't. Some have prominent flow lines, others don't.

Machines are made with multiple moulds in them as it is a great deal cheaper to run a machine with 10 moulds for one hour than it is to run a machine with one mould for 10 hours; both for labour costs and also for energy consumption. A multi mould machine also allows continuous production when one mould becomes faulty as the injector to that mould is closed off while the other moulds within the machine can still produce parts for months if not years. Only when too many moulds are unserviceable will the machine be overhauled. A single mould machine becoming faulty will halt production completely until the machine is overhauled.

[Cayden]

Yes Jerry, as I said it was the worst batch of whistles in the Oak/Gen/Faedog category I have ever gone through, that jar has been sitting there in Custy's for a while and as I said I was possibly scraping the bottom of the barrel. Ofcourse it's equally possible there' tens of thousands of the same quality as the one I bought sitting in the shops and I will have another go at it in the next shop selling Generations I get to, just to see how things turn out when trying another batch.

I am not denying there were some scratchy ones in this batch, buying whistles can be like that and always has been. The number of scratchy ones was four out of five in a batch of whistles of nearly ten times the prices of the Generation in the same shop (see the thread I linked to somewhere earlier during this thread). You shouldn't ever buy whistles, or any instrument, before testing them for suitability.

e-bay Item number: 190066054218

$110.52

Too bad we can't find any of those nice early Gens at a modest price

Hm yes, I was following that one but £56 was a bit OTT when untried. One of my neighbours has a suitcase full of old whistles, going back to his grandfather some of them. At least that is what his nephew told me, wouldn't mind having a look at those.

[Jerry Freeman]

Jerry, are you sure that Generation only have one mould?

In fact, I'm certain they have more than one. There are certain, identical casting defects you see on every third or fourth whistle, but not on other whistles in the same box. I do assume, however, that each mold has been used approximately the same amount and would therefore have about the same amount of wear and tear.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[crookedtune]

Over many years, I've gravitated toward the "vintage-schmintage" pursuasion. As a guitar, banjo and mandolin player, I have owned and played a long procession of old Martins, Gibsons, Orpheums, Vegas, etc....and have sold most of them off.

While some of these were excellent instruments, none was "magic" by virtue of bloodlines. In fact my favorite fingerstyle guitar of those I have owned is the Korean-made "Parkwood" that I bought last year at Guitar Center for $400. Today's higher-end banjos top anything made in the 20th C, IMHO. And the best of today's mandolins top Gibson's best, (also IMHO).

It's fun to fantasize about the the divine knowledge that instrument-makers like Lloyd Loar infused into their craft in generations gone by, but I don't put much stock in in. In whistles, my wager is that today's cheapies are every bit as good and consistent as those of yore. And a hand-tuned instrument, whether factory-produced or hand-made, is typically better. The more attention it gets in the finishing stage, the better it'll be --- and thus the case for tweaking.

[walrii]

I sent an email to Barnes and Mullins Manufacturing Ltd., the maker of Generations. They are hard to find as they don't have a regular website. The link on the C & F main board dumped me into a search engine. Anyway, I invited Barnes and Mullins to join the discussion here. Maybe we'll get a few answers. Or not.

[Jerry Freeman]

In whistles, my wager is that today's cheapies are every bit as good and consistent as those of yore.

In this case, it's a matter of comparing apples and oranges with pre-1980's Generations vs. current ones, and Mark I Feadogs vs. the present, Mark III ones. They're different models of whistles, with different characteristics.

Guitars, and presumably other instruments sold in large numbers, would benefit from advances in design technology and production methods. However, that's not as likely to be the case with whistles, because it's such a tiny, niche market, and there are relatively few whistle design experts who might contribute to the product's evolution.

With Generations, there's also the issue with inconsistency. Even the pre-1980's Generations have some variation, but nowadays, the variation may be even more than it used to be. Older Generation whistleheads of the same type as are being made now do generally seem cleaner and more precise in their castings, which I interpret to mean the tooling has become worn.

As I've commented before, Feadogs and Waltons are very consistent and clean in the quality of their castings.

Best wishes,
Jerry

[straycat82]

I'm not sure if it's a cultural thing or just bad luck but I've not found a shop locally yet that will allow testing a whistle before you buy it... and not only that but many of them have a policy stating that wind instruments are non-returnable once you do play them. For that very reason I have purchased a very small percentage of my whistles from local shops. Usually I'd rather support the local Mom & Pop music shop rather than get it cheaper online but if I can't try it out then there's no point. I can purchase it online for cheaper and, in most cases, return it if I'm not satisfied. In addition to that every music store I've come across here has sold only the Generation kits with a CD and tutor or, the Gens that were sold single, had the head joint wrapped in plastic and I was not permitted to remove it. That being said, all of the Gens that I currently own (at least one in every key) were puchased at random over the last six years or so and I like all of them. I have slightly modified some of them that were too raspy for my taste but it didn't take much outside of removing bits of flashing and debris for them to be to my liking. The only one I've been thinking of modifying further is a brass D. The amount of space between the windway floor and the bottom of the blade is pretty high and I'd like to see how changing that would affect the whistle. It is shear curiosity though, and I am happy with that whistle so I may buy another one for the experiment to keep from ruining a good whistle.

[colomon]

I'm not sure what we've accomplished here.

I'm with Jerry on this. It seems to me all Peter has done is shown that given a random-ish batch of Generations, a very good player with decades of experience playing Generations can find one he can make sound nice without tweaking.

Much more interesting would be how Peter sounds playing the worst Generation in that batch. Or how a reasonably good but not great player sounds on the best. (Both one with and without extensive Generation experience.)

[Wanderer]

I'm not sure what we've accomplished here.

My take on it is that we've determined that Peter can pick a good whistle, and then sound good playing the one he's hand selected.

I guess I'm still trying to figure out how that relates to all of the ones he didn't choose, especially the ones he described as scratchy and hissy.

I don't think anyone is arguing here thall all Generations are terrible, though that seems to be the argument he's speaking to.

[Wombat]

I'm not sure what we've accomplished here.

I'm with Jerry on this. It seems to me all Peter has done is shown that given a random-ish batch of Generations, a very good player with decades of experience playing Generations can find one he can make sound nice without tweaking.

Much more interesting would be how Peter sounds playing the worst Generation in that batch. Or how a reasonably good but not great player sounds on the best. (Both one with and without extensive Generation experience.)

Quite so. As I pointed out earlier, a very experienced guitar player could pull the same stunt with a cheap guitar but nobody, and certainly not the player, would argue either that it is as a good a guitar as a more expensive one—it might be, but that would be rare—nor that a beginner would do just as well to learn on it.

My current thought on this topic, just educated guesswork of course, is that the truth lies somewhere in between. Whistles are simpler instruments than guitars but the same principles must apply—nobody has even hinted at a reason why they wouldn't. So what the simplicity suggests to me is that there is less difference, on average, between cheap and expensive whistles than between cheap and expensive guitars. So the difference is probably one of degree rather than one of kind. That seems likely.

Guitars vary a lot, even within makes and styles, one from another. A few years ago I bought a Martin 000-28 to be my accoustic workhorse—about $A5,000. I would have tried about 60 guitars before settling on the one I bought, many of them Martins, and bought the one that, to me, had a magical tone. My main luthier agreed with me that it's tone and playing characteristics were exceptional. It currently has a fault that requires that it go to a Martin authorised repairer for treatment. I've put off sending it off for over a year because I'm frightened that Martin will insist on replacing it rather than repairing it—I don't want any old 000-28; I want my 000-28. You'd be a fool if you think that merely paying big money will get you a guitar that is special. So why would you expect expensive whistles to be consistent? They shouldn't have serious faults but you'll have to search for the magical one.

[StevieJ]

I'm not sure if it's a cultural thing or just bad luck but I've not found a shop locally yet that will allow testing a whistle before you buy it... and not only that but many of them have a policy stating that wind instruments are non-returnable once you do play them.

In my experience most stores in Canada, England and Ireland have no problem with allowing people to try whistles. And among those that object, I've not found one that won't relent after a bit of friendly reasonable persuasion. I usually explain that the whistles vary, that I teach and looking for instruments for my students, or that I want to buy 3 or 4.

An argument that worked immediately on one particularly stubborn salesman was, "That $1000 Boehm flute in the cabinet there: would you expect anyone to buy that without trying it?" And of course he would not.

[Cayden]

Jerry has in the past sent me an 'unplayable one' for reference. I played that one for him and he described the result here in the past. Using that one as a yardstick, none of the scratchy ones was worse than that particular one.

The difference is one of degrees, none in the batch I tried were harder to play than the one in the clips, the low octave was solid in all. The high notes (a and b) were a bit scratchy in a few and very scratchy in one (g,a and b).

Ofcourse you pick an instrument before you buy it, I've seen fine whistle players go through a whole box of tweaked ones (O Briain but there's no reason to think any other make would be different) to pick the nicest one or the one that they found most suitable. It doesn't necessarily mean the rest are total rejects.

Having made the argument many times in the past and have the argument I made disparaged as 'the lengths Generation apologists like Peter will go to' and been told there's no reasoning with the likes of me it seems quite desperate, confronted with actual recordings, the argument is now being undermined because it comes from 'very good player with decades of experience'.

Do I need to round up a few local 12-14 year olds who can actually play rings round me to make the point?