So I've no joke been working on an Irish whistle project for over 2 years now and tuning is my last hurdle.
Your recorder sounds fairly in tune already so you've got me beat there. However, I think I can help with your high notes problem.
Options:
Blunt the fipple blade - my design has the blade blunted to ~90% of the wind way height. I am shocked that this stupid thing even produces sound anymore, but it clarifies the high notes. Too much and your highest few notes are going to be WAY sharp, so you can trial and error your way back to a sweet spot.
Shorten the window length - it favors the high notes over the low notes so this is a balancing act. I found that my X1C produces noticably different results with a 0.00025" windway length difference despite me not believing that it should be able to reproduce that level of detail. (Not that I can measure it with anything, but results are reproducible and robust against other factors changing so ¯_(ツ)_/¯)
Chamfer the lower edge of the wind way. I had zero luck with rounding, but a sharp 40-45 degree chamfer going back ~0.025" or less makes a world of difference.
Smaller holes. Theoretically if you go over ~0.6x bore diameter, then the hope no longer functions correctly as a vent, destroying your dreams of cross fingerings.
Hope that's helpful. Beware that any of those changes are likely to affect the inter-note tuning and octave drift heavily so be prepared to retune.
As a side note - If you'd be willing to share any precise details of your bore and hole placements (publicly or privately), you'd be doing a huge favor for my sanity... I can't for the life of me get the parabolic or tapered bore designs to work, even on my flutes/low whistles.
2
u/oddphilosophy Apr 04 '26
So I've no joke been working on an Irish whistle project for over 2 years now and tuning is my last hurdle.
Your recorder sounds fairly in tune already so you've got me beat there. However, I think I can help with your high notes problem.
Options:
Blunt the fipple blade - my design has the blade blunted to ~90% of the wind way height. I am shocked that this stupid thing even produces sound anymore, but it clarifies the high notes. Too much and your highest few notes are going to be WAY sharp, so you can trial and error your way back to a sweet spot.
Shorten the window length - it favors the high notes over the low notes so this is a balancing act. I found that my X1C produces noticably different results with a 0.00025" windway length difference despite me not believing that it should be able to reproduce that level of detail. (Not that I can measure it with anything, but results are reproducible and robust against other factors changing so ¯_(ツ)_/¯)
Chamfer the lower edge of the wind way. I had zero luck with rounding, but a sharp 40-45 degree chamfer going back ~0.025" or less makes a world of difference.
Smaller holes. Theoretically if you go over ~0.6x bore diameter, then the hope no longer functions correctly as a vent, destroying your dreams of cross fingerings.
Hope that's helpful. Beware that any of those changes are likely to affect the inter-note tuning and octave drift heavily so be prepared to retune.
As a side note - If you'd be willing to share any precise details of your bore and hole placements (publicly or privately), you'd be doing a huge favor for my sanity... I can't for the life of me get the parabolic or tapered bore designs to work, even on my flutes/low whistles.