As I understand the Generation, Waltons and Feadog are appreciated by you guys.
So, as these are cheapies, I might buy several and experiment to switch heads !
Hydromel 89, I didn't know le comptoir irlandais. Great news that such a shop exists in Paris.
I hope you mean the Sweetone, which is also made by Clarke. There is the Clarke original in C, which is a smashing good whistle, esp. after you smash the windway.
I hope you mean the Sweetone, which is also made by Clarke. There is the Clarke original in C, which is a smashing good whistle, esp. after you smash the windway.
Just in the interest of increasing the size of the statistical sampling, I just bought two Clarke originals in C. I had really liked my Clarke D's and hoped the C's might be similar. Unfortunatly both of them were so badly out of tune with themselves I could not even correct it with any amount of breath control. They would get hung up between octaves before reaching even close to the proper pitch on some notes. I realise that two of them are not a definitive sampling but these two were pretty bad....
I have a Generation C nickel that sounds just great (tweaked if you need to or get lucky). For some reason I think C is just the most forgiving of keys on the whistle tone-wise.
I hope you mean the Sweetone, which is also made by Clarke. There is the Clarke original in C, which is a smashing good whistle, esp. after you smash the windway.
Yes, I was speaking of the meg/sweetone.
I bought a generation this afternoon. It plays quite well but there is some plastic parts wich makes disturbing noise that I must remove, and I'll have to tweak it with blue tack as my other generations.
Only problem : the plastic head is completely blocked ! impossible to move it, even with hot water.
Tell us something.: Playing Scottish and Irish music in California for 45 years. These days many discussions are migrating to Facebook but I prefer the online chat forum format.
I've been playing the same Generation C for around 20 years. It's a fantastic player, perfectly in tune after a bit of tweaking (carving some of the tone holes and packing the head). It's been heard on many a soundtrack and album.
The great thing about the original Clarke C whistles is that you can tremendously vary the tone and response by altering the windway and cutting edge. My Clarke C plays great after tweaking. I lowered and widened the windway, widened the cutting edge, and altered the height and shape of the cutting edge. It plays very well in tune. It's great for that old-school trad Irish sound.
However recently I've been using an aluminum Burke C instead, mostly due to superior volume. Unlike the others, it was perfectly in tune when I bought it!
Oh Tegea- I had that happen exactly! I found a Generation C which was a terrific player- sweet upper notes, full round lower notes, and in-tune octaves off-the-shelf! But of course the head was shoved all the way down and glued so that it was far too sharp. I heated and heated, twisted and twisted, and that head just would not come off! I actually got to the point where I said, I don't care a bit about the body, I just want that head to come off, so I actually ruined the body but still the head would not budge. So I'm now going to saw the thing off.
tegea, The Generations in C have a well known characteristic about their fipple heads. They are a bugger to get off. Not only do they have the usuall glue which all Gens have but the diameter of the actual hole on the heads is smaller than the tube. It's like they are stretcted on or something. I recently removed a couple of them using the hot water with drilled wood block method (See the thread on Feadog tweaking of a couple of days ago for details). After removing the head, it helps to take some fine sanpaper in a tight roll and ream out the hole on the fipple to make it easier to put back on the tube.
Thank you dreamOgreen, I just tried the drilled wood block method as you suggest, and it worked ! But impossible to put it back again correctly.
I will use sand paper to address this and everything should be ok.
The fastest way I know to enlarge a whistlehead socket is ...
If you have a whistle that has a smaller diameter tube than the tube that is intended to fit the socket, use the non-fipple end of that whistle tube as a scraper.
The sharp cutoff end of the smaller tube will scrape a small amount of plastic from the sides of the socket. Very easy and fast, and you can control the results quite well. I've never been happy with any other scraping or sanding technique. I use a Generation G whistle for this, but a standard D size tube will also work to scrape a C whistlehead socket.
Thank you Jerry, your technique worked really fine.
I just performed a minimum tweak on the Gen C, a clean up of the head and some blue tack, and the result is really excellent ! This whistle is a winner, the best of all my generation !
tegea wrote:Thank you Jerry, your technique worked really fine.
I just performed a minimum tweak on the Gen C, a clean up of the head and some blue tack, and the result is really excellent ! This whistle is a winner, the best of all my generation !
I did that on my Gens too, a D, Bb and G. Especially with the G it's very very effective, it makes a world of a diffence.
I also have an Impempe C, D, F and Bb, not cheapies but still not expensive ($40,- but worth twice as much I'd say) and with a VERY beautiful sound.
Well, I must admit that it worked a lot better on this C gen that on the 3 D gens that I have. I think the Ds need a more heavy tweak to be perfect. On the Ds, the blade seems to be really too high when looking at it through the windway.
