I made one of these (sans the staining, so mine looks like plastic) several years ago, and it sounds very nice. The PVC actually is a good resonator, and the bends and dimples I put into it with a heat gun made the sound fairly “authentic”
Getting the beeswax mouthpiece just right takes a little work, though.
Have I met you? Seriously it’s probably just a coincidence that several years ago I met a didgeridoo player in Nashville who’d made his own out of PVC pipe. It was amazing and sounded authentic.
My own failed attempts to play the didgeridoo convinced me I have no musical talent whatsoever because it’s such an easy instrument to play. I don’t mean that as an insult to good didgeridoo players, though. I consider it to be like the piano, which is also easy to play, but difficult to play well.
Needs a sticker.
“My smaller sibling is a vuvuzela”.
Nah, I’m vaguely in the DC area (although outside the “metro” portion of it).
I agree that like many intruments, it’s both easy and hard – in other words, it’s easy to play simple things, but difficult to play well. I can get a pretty good sound out of it, but some of the more advanced techniques have been a bane, and circular breathing is a bitch!
Uh, yeah, please do make sure to get that beeswax on the mouthpiece, stuck well and truly on any part that touches your skin. Still, I wouldn’t want to spend a lot of hot sweaty time holding that plastic with my hands.
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe manufacturers have been invited to voluntarily discontinue putting lead into their plastic pipes http://www.pvc.org/en/p/lead-stabilisers. This link also has some of the percentages of lead content when used as stabilizers in various PVC pipes. Ick.
I’ll take wood, thanks. I realize old school didg means long hours, handmade. I ended up taking a big section of green wide bamboo and using a piece of rebar to pop through the culms that separated the joints of tube. Sounds pretty good. And we keep bees, so their wax was pretty near to hand.
It’s percentage of lead in the specific compounds. In the PVC material itself the stabilizer is grossly diluted by the base polymer. It is also immobilized by the polymer network, which inhibits its leaching. Actual values of percentage of the stabilizer in the resin would tell more, and values of lead leaching under specific conditions would be even more useful in evaluation the hazard.
Which, I’d guess, is fairly minuscule.
Thanks shaddack. Good news then.
I have a son who has made a blowgun that shoots newspaper darts (add some sand and white glue for specific mass and he gets some good range) at the deer out here. I will now cease worrying how much lead he is exposing himself to.
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