**** Further Modifications for the Primos/Randy Anderson Hot Dog Call and the Dakota Howler ****

SDHowler

SDHowler

New member
The fall calling season is coming upon us and for those of you who may not have seen the following post on how the Primos Hot Dog call can be modified to make the call easier to blow and hopefully improve the sounds that a caller can make with this call.

The following pic shows a Primos Hot Dog call:

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I'm one of those guys that takes calls apart and experiments with them. I have heard and read that many callers were not satisfied with the Primos Hot Dog Call. Hence I attempted to make some changes and improvements to the Hot Dog call that would make the call easier to blow, without pitch breaks out to the tip of the tone board. This is one of the main calls used by Randy Anderson.

The following pic shows the original tone board portion with no reed block and the lower call portion with the reed block in place. You can remove the tone board portion of the call by twisting it out of the holding assembly.

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Please note the small white reed piece #2 in the below pic. This is what I call the reed block or a riser that I have added to the call to create a gap between the reed and the tone barrel. You can experiment with various reed material from 0.020 to 0.040 in thickness for these blocks or risers under the call reed. Sorry, but I can’t say which reed thicknesses works the best.


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I cut the white plastic piece #2 to a diameter that allows the piece to fit within the back portion of the tone barrel under the reed and I used a rotary punch to make the small holes.

You can experiment with your call by using portions #1 - #4 of the tone barrel shown above and blowing the call to see if you note any improvements. If you have one of these Hot Dog calls or other open reed calls, give this tone board modification a try. I feel you will be impressed with the various sounds made by the call.

For the finished product, the small wedge portion #4 of the call that covers the reed, will need to be sanded down to allow the components to be placed back within the tube #5 that holds the tone barrel portions. I used my orbital sander for this project and held the small wedge portion with a vise grip while sanding the down the bottom of the wedge surface.

I have used a recessed or scalloped area at the top end of my Dakota Howler for several years and have been well pleased with the tone board change. This allows the calls to be blown without a break of pitch and a better sound to the end of the sound channel. I have always said "where there is a will there is a way".

I used small round and/or half round files to recess the areas on my Dakota Howler tone boards.

The following pic shows one of my Dakota Howlers with the tone board modified at the upper end below the castrating rings. I also changed the metal jigs I use to cut out these tone boards with my scroll saw.

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I was very grateful to Will Primos when he sent me some Hot Dog tone board components to work with my changes with the Hot Dog call. The following pic shows my latest modification to the Primos Hot Dog tone board:

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Such filing to the Hot Dog tone board amounts to a permanent change, but it sure made POSITIVE changes to the Hot Dog with the recessed area on the top upper end of the tone board using a small round or half round file.

As you will read in the following replies about my hot dog modifications, I was glad to read that some guys tried these changes to the Hot Dog tone board and were satisfied with the results. I would appreciate your comments to this post whether it may be negative or positive. I have shared these modifications and some of the modified calls with both Will Primos and Randy Anderson. Hopefully they will take some time to read this post and our comments on changes to the Primos Hot Dog call. As of this revision on 3/5/2017 to my initial Predator Master's post on 3/16/2007, this post has received 10,317 views.
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THANKS to all of you that have taken the time to review this post.

 
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I did this mod to my hot dog and the results were great. For a spacer I just used 2 layers of material I cut from the side of a milk jug. That worked out to be about .040 inch. This worked fantastic. No more squawks half way through a howl. Now I think I will be able to feel confident about using this howler more often. This tip gets a big thumbs up from me.
 
Thanks for your comments guys. Shortening the reed or moving it back small distances improved the Hot Dog's sound quality also. As I always say, where there is a will there is a way to make something work better.
 
Tony:

I talked to Will Primos about the modifications I had made with the Hot Dog Call and he sent me multiple tone boards and reeds to work with. I made changes to these tone boards and sent them back to Will. He was very appreciative for my showing him the modified tone boards, but he said the cost would be to great to modify their molds for the Hot Dog Call.
 
I know I'm bringing this up from the dead. Thank you for coming up with this mod. I'm trying to find some material to do this mod. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong at the moment. I blow hard and it sounds like a buck mating with a duck, I blow light it won't barely make a sound or it's broken. I think I picked the worse first hand call lol
 
Originally Posted By: IconixI know I'm bringing this up from the dead. Thank you for coming up with this mod. I'm trying to find some material to do this mod.

Plastic material from "blister" packaging would suit great for this purpose. The thermoform plastic that they package everything in these days.
 
LMAO thanks Varminterror, I just did it and was about to suggest it... It kind at helped.. Now it would be my part of poor blowing lol
 
Both have their learning curves. My n = 1 experience was that toneboard howlers were/are easier to learn, but admittedly I've been playing reeds for a long long time, and don't play diaphragms much.

I like handcalls though, pretty hard to make a diaphragm howler look sexy sitting on a shelf.
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Although my opinion wasn't asked for, I'm going to give it anyway. Hahahaha

While I never tried a Red Desert howler, I do know that the Hot Dog was/is "loosely" based upon it.
I bought a Hot Dog way back, when they were originally introduced, (...along with the 'Lil Dog & the Ki-Yi).

As an asthmatic, I hated the Hot Dog. The reed is thicker mylar than I prefer. And the air channel in the 'board is horribly large.
Prior to buying it, I had been using an original Song Dog, from Crit'r Call, which I really liked.
Needless to say, the Hot Dog sat on my shelf for a few years, until after I started trying to make my own calls.
Once that happenned, as an experiment, I put a Hot Dog mouthpiece into a thin-walled cowhorn...which changed the back-pressure...and made the howler easier to use properly.
But, I still don't like it's huge air channel. Hahaha

And, no...I do not think that the Hot Dog is a very good howler for a "beginner" to learn on. But that's only my opinion.
 
Since Will mentioned the Red Desert Howler, I'd kinda expand on his comments about the Hot Dog compared to other howlers.

I think the DT RDH is way easier to howl than the Hot Dog. The "tube based" toneboards with wide open air channels and big diameters like that take a lot of airflow to build pressure and get the reed moving. I'm sure that Primos THOUGHT that adding backpressure in their exhaust would help get the reed moving easier, but it didn't quite workout that way. I figure that's why so many people figure out they like the Primos Lil Dog more than the Hot Dog, a lot easier to get it moving with less air.
 
Hey Will, your experienced opinion is always welcome to me. I'm new and dumb so even the smallest of opinions will help me out.

This is my first ever open read hand call and was the only howler available at canadian tire. So my options were/are limited. I do have foxpro wildfire. But I wanted a howler to play with my foxpro and I wanted to use it to locate coyotes the night before. I do have a siren on my foxpro but I don't want to scare the neighbours late at night.

It's funny cause I heard this call was good, most need to be a pro to use it.
 
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