Reyburn low G whistle: 

a Chiff & Fipple review by Stephen Jones

plus a bonus review of the Reyburn Low D by Jessie Kislin

Ronaldo Reyburn, feeling that his instruments are not getting all the attention they deserve in certain quarters, asked me whether I would be willing to try one on approval and review it for Chiff & Fipplers. When my warning that I’m not much of a low-whistle player failed to deter him, I asked Ronaldo if I could try his highest-pitched whistle, a low G. (I doubt my capacity to handle anything bigger than a low F, and I already have a Chieftain in that key.) The Reyburn arrived some weeks ago and, with the interruption of holiday travels, I have been putting it (and myself) through its paces ever since.

As I just mentioned, I’m not a seasoned connoisseur of low whistles, so bear in mind that my Chieftain low F - my only other low whistle - is the sole basis for comparison I have to help me assess the Reyburn. Also please note that for simplicity’s sake all references to note pitches are transposed - I’m talking as if it were a D whistle. "B", for example, therefore refers to the note obtained by stopping the topmost hole only, and "D" to the fundamental ("bell note").

Construction

Reyburn whistles are unique in that they consist of a brass-tube body topped by a maple head. This concept appeals to me very much: as some Chiff & Fipplers will know, I have reservations (apparently shared by nobody else) about playing aluminum whistles. The maple head is beautifully put together and finished, with the look of a well-engineered piece of industrial design. Ronaldo uses an acrylic sealant which makes oiling unnecessary. The mouthpiece has a very warm and pleasant feel to the lips.

The brass body is available in a choice of plain polished or "powder-coated" tarnish-resistant finish. I like the patina that a standard brass whistle develops with use, and I don’t have the kind of hands that dull metal immediately, so I chose the polished-brass finish (which is also slightly less expensive). The bore of the brass tube is about 2mm wider than that of the lower Chieftain - immediately suggesting that this instrument is designed for power. Despite the wall of the tube being considerably thinner than that of the aluminum whistle, the weight of the brass makes the Reyburn G feel significantly heavier than the Chieftain F.

This choice of materials allows Ronaldo to offer an instrument with the rich sound of wood at considerably less than the cost of a high-quality, all-wooden maker’s whistle. For example, Reyburns sell at under half the price of a comparable boxwood low whistle made by top English maker Jon Swayne.

Using a wooden head on a brass body might be seen as asking for trouble, however, because the two materials are bound to respond differently to atmospheric changes. Ronaldo maintains that the deep-penetrating acrylic sealant makes the wood very stable. He makes the bore of the head a little wide, and the player wraps enough Teflon tape around the end of the brass tube to provide a good seal at the head, thereby adjusting to local conditions..

In my case, the oversizing of the head quickly proved inadequate: Montreal, where I live, has extremes of climate, with hot, humid summers and cold, dry winters. In centrally heated apartment buildings such as the one I inhabit, it is very difficult in winter to keep humidity at a level that wooden instruments like - a problem of which, as the owner of a couple of violins, I am acutely aware. Even running a humidifier, it is a battle for me to keep humidity above 25%, and without a humidifier the level can quickly drop to below 15% - very dangerous for fiddles!

When I first received the whistle in November, I needed to use a couple of windings of Teflon tape. But as winter began to bite and the heating went up, I found I could no longer fit the head onto the body without forcing it. Ronaldo assures me that none of his customers have encountered this problem before, which is reasonable, since few places have worse climates for instruments than Montreal. But in any case the affair was quickly rectified: using a simple wooden guide supplied by Ronaldo, I sanded the inside of the head so that I could fit it again - a procedure that turned out to be very straightforward and could easily have been done without the special tool.

Big sound - hard or soft

Ronaldo told me that he got hooked on low whistles, and the idea of making them, as a result of Riverdance. He has never made, or as far as I know played, a high whistle, and I don’t get the impression he plays many reels. I think this explains his approach to the development of his instruments. It is clear that he has gone all out to achieve a big sound and rich tone-colours.

With its wooden head and metal body, you could portray the Reyburn as a hybrid between a whistle and a recorder, and indeed the best way I can describe the sound is as a cross between the rich and powerful woody tone of an alto Renaissance recorder and the silkiness of, say, a Chieftain or Overton.

Like a quality recorder, the instrument needs to be warmed up for a few minutes. This means that you cannot arrive in a hot, steamy pub session from the cold winter street and start playing immediately. (A good way of warming an instrument used by recorder players I have known is to stick the head joint under your armpit for a few minutes while you drink your tea, or order a drink from the bar.)

The first thing I noticed about the Reyburn was the huge sound, with a very strong low end, and well balanced throughout the range. The sound has practically zero chiff (breathiness), something that I missed greatly at first, but which is bothering me less and less as I go on.

The Reyburn is so much louder than anything I have tried that I initially felt inhibited about playing it full blast in the apartment. However, I soon got over that, especially as I became aware of one of the instrument’s best features: you can vary the air pressure, and hence the volume, very considerably, without affecting the pitch. The Chieftain allows a degree of this in the upper octave (a feature that well-known low-whistlers exploit to allow notes to die away). However, with the Reyburn you can do it to a much greater extent, and throughout the full range (except perhaps for the high A and B). In the lower octave, increasing the breath pressure causes very pleasing overtones to kick in, giving a rich sound with something of a hard edge. Alternatively, you can go for a very soft and tender tone. This choice gives the instrument massive expressive potential for slow airs.

This whistle will most certainly appeal to those who like an instrument that can take sustained, powerful blowing. On the other hand, you don’t have to blow hard to get it to play very nicely. In fact, given the amount of air the Reyburn can take, it is quite astonishing how little wind you can use to obtain a very soft yet full sound. Indeed, as I continue to play the instrument, I am getting to like this soft tone more and more.

Fingering considerations

The next thing I noticed was that the Reyburn requires different playing technique from anything I am used to. Now, my idea of the perfect whistle is a very good Generation. One of the reasons I took to the Chieftain low F is that basically, it behaves like a big Generation, and apart from the size factor and the increased air requirements, I can use exactly the same fingering techniques that I have developed over years of playing cheap whistles. No such luck with the Reyburn, which tripped me up on a number of points immediately!

My preferred two-handed C-natural fingering [|oxxx-xox] is completely unusable, producing a note that is not only very flat, but very weak. [|oxx-ooo] is in better tune, but still weak. Ronaldo recommends using the following fingering, [|oxo-xxo] which gives a strong, clear, well-tuned note. However I find this fingering a nuisance, so I have settled on [|oxo-xox], which is closer to what I am used to and works equally well, for long, important notes, resorting to the weaker [|oxx-ooo] for fast passages.

There are a couple of other fingerings that I like to use on my other whistles that the Reyburn balks at: to get a second-octave C-natural you can’t use [|oxo-ooo]. But [|oxo-xxo] does work. For a second octave G-sharp (usable, although not true) you have to use [|xxo-xoo] rather than [|xxo-xxo], which causes the whistle to freak out.

Another thing that causes the Reyburn to freak out is to play the high B, and sometimes the high A, with fingers covering (or lurking near) the lower holes. I habitually place the third finger of my bottom hand over its hole to stabilize the whistle when playing fast ornamented passages at the top of the whistle’s range. Doing this on the Reyburn will give you all kinds of nasty squawks. So I’ve had to re-educate myself to use my little finger in such situations, below the bottom hole. Not difficult, but a re-education nevertheless. With the diameter and heft of this whistle, some extra support is definitely required. (I am seriously considering gluing a thumb rest, as used by recorder players, onto the back of the whistle.)

Response

There were other aspects of the Reyburn that I immediately found difficult. Flipping between the octaves takes significantly more effort than on the Chieftain - enough to make certain typical passages in reels, for example, problematical. Phrases such as the "rocking-pedal" figure in the opening bars of "The Flowers of Red Hill" were a particular challenge.

I also had problems with passages such as the opening bars of the reel "The Boys of Ballisodare", which involves jumping up from a low G alternately to a high D and a high E. To get the high D to kick in fast enough, you really need to lift the first finger of your top hand, which goes against all my ingrained playing habits. (In my book, laziness as an aid to fast playing makes perfect sense.) If you don’t lift the first finger, the high D sounds muffled for a microsecond, and in passages like this, that’s all the time it gets.

I think that all these issues - the Reyburn’s "non-standard" fingerings, the bottom-finger squawk factor, and less ease in flipping between octaves - are the result of its being tuned for maximum tone and volume.

Now Ronaldo is an obliging fellow, and very open to customer feedback. So in response to my reel woes, he sent me a modified head with a reduced airway. This did improve the response, almost but not quite bringing it up to the level of the Chieftain. But of course there is a trade-off - the loss of a small portion of the wonderful overtones you can get in the first octave with the original head by pushing the air pressure. Also, paradoxically, with the narrower airway I find I have to push harder to get the high B. At the moment I can’t quite decide which head to keep!

Conclusion

The Reyburn is like many highly developed instruments: to get to know it, to get the most out of it, takes time. (When I got my first really fine fiddle, after years of playing a serviceable but undistinguished instrument, I realized that I had to let it teach me how it wanted to be played.)

Less than a week ago, I had come to two conclusions about the Reyburn low G. First, that with its wide range of tone colour and dynamic possibilities, it was simply a magnificent instrument for playing slow airs. Second, that trying to play jigs or reels at a decent speed was too much like hard work, and not what the instrument was designed for in any case.

In the past few days I have been spending more and more time with the Reyburn, and feel that at last I have understood how to work with it, rather than fighting the difficulties I have mentioned above and which I found so discouraging at first. The first of my above conclusions definitely stands, but the second is starting to look distinctly shaky!

As a result, I have decided not only to buy the instrument, but to order from Ronaldo an additional body in F, which uses the same head as the G. The extra length with the same bore diameter will, I imagine, make the instrument slightly more tractable, and indeed Ronaldo considers that the bore-length ratio of the F is optimal. In the meantime, I am getting enormous pleasure from the G, and looking forward to developing my skills on it still further.

If you like a big, rich sound, and fancy the ability to vary tone and volume, I recommend you give these instruments very serious consideration. If you can handle a larger whistle, ponder one of the lower Reyburns, whose sound, judging by the clips on Ronaldo’s web site (http://www.reyburnlowwhistles.com/), is even more seductive!
 
Jessie Kislin recently made these remarks on the chiff&fipple message board.  These remarks are important because Jessie is an experienced player and collector:

"Recently in a trade, I got a Ronaldo Reyburn Low D whistle that is unmatched in tone and playability. I had tried a Low G of his before, but the Low D surpassed it. He has redesigned his fipples and I have not yet tried the new one, but if it is an improvement on the one I have, it must be unbelievable. It takes very little air (I can play it while reclining) and has a rich, pure tone. The last hole is a bit far, but I cheat and use my pinky. It works fine. If you are looking for a Low D, look into this one...he offers risk-free purchasing."

 

 

 

 

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