So about 2 months ago I purchased my first set of Gulvas mouth calls; 1 double reed, 2 masters choice, 1 gray master, and 1 triple reed. In the research I had done on Gulvas' calls, I had an understanding that these calls were no regular mouth calls. They run completely different from most mouth calls, and came to the conclusion, going into it, that I was probably going to have to get worse, before I get better. The first call I tried was the double, and after about 10-20 hours of running it and practicing it, decided to try out the masters choice as I found it difficult to soft talk with rasp on the double reed. Right away, I found that the masters choice was going to be more suitable for soft talking, and overall just a more versatile call. Now, I've been running the masters choice for about a month and a half, with EASILY over 50 hours of practice. I wore the first one out to where the top reed developed a small split on the edge, and the tape would skate around on the metal ring. It's been a hard run learning this call. I find that when it sounds good, it sounds absolutely phenomenal, but when it sounds bad, its absolutely awful. Things are still improving, but sometimes it seems like at a snails pace. The hardest thing I'm trying to overcome, is the 'squawking' sound I get instead of rasp sometimes. The squawk always seems to come from the front of the call, where good rasp seems to come from my throat. Why can't I seem to consistently control my rasp?
I've been running mouth calls for about 5 or so years now, and can consistently run a woodhaven or knight and hale, or really anything with either a batwing, or combo cut. However, although I have consistency on those calls, like I said before, when the Gulvas sounds good, it sounds GOOD. So, I'm determined to learn it. I'd like to hear other peoples experiences learning to run a Gulvas call, and even experiences that others may have had trying to perfect a certain call. Anybody else have similar experiences in trying to perfect a throaty rasp, that truly does come from the throat, rather than the latex sounding reeds?
Thanks fellas. Cheers.
