UPDATE:
As mentioned earlier, Mike Crooks of
SPRING CREEK TURKEY CALLS graciously volunteered to take a look at my box call and see if he could tune and improve it. I gratefully sent the call to his Michigan shop.
Mike disassembled the call and lightly sanded the lid and rails. He reassembled it with a smaller screw to allow more canting of the lid. From there he applied Rain Chalk and tuned the call. The major issue he found was the rail thicknesses were very thin at almost 40 thousandths less than what Mike considers normal rail thicknesses. This will not allow for a smooth 2 note high to low yelp and that is why it sounds so bad. Mike did indeed improve the call with his tuning efforts and the call sounds better than ever, but due to the thin rails it will not earn a spot in my ol' tattered vest.
But no worries there .... during the course of working with Mike, I noticed the great work he does on his Spring Creek Box Calls and I have now procured one of his beautifully crafted short boxes that sounds great and will fit in my vest pocket very nicely next spring.
Kudos to Mike Crooks and Spring Creek Turkey Calls !!GunRunner