Reyburn high D/C whistle combination

Reviewed for Chiff and Fipple by Stephen Jones, July 2002

Ronaldo Reyburn has sent me his new high D/C whistle combination for review: he must be either he a brave man or very sure of his product!

I say this because he knows I'm hard to please and a bit of a skeptic as far as high-end "soprano" whistles are concerned. I like Generations, and also Clarke originals: they play well, they're cheap, and if you pick and choose and tweak you can easily get yourself a fabulous little instrument for peanuts. Many expensive whistles, though they may be louder and tunable, just don't sound as good to my ear. (Similar thoughts about expensive high whistles were expressed by the well-known whistle teacher Bill Ochs in the concluding remarks of his C&F interview on this page.)

Well, after trying these whistles for many hours over the past couple of weeks, I consider that Ronaldo's confidence in his product is justified. This is my kind of whistle.

Appearance and construction

Like Reyburn's low whistles (this is his first release of anything higher than low G) the head is made of rock maple, stabilized by the application of a penetrating acrylic sealer, and the body of cylindrical brass tube. But the resemblance stops there. Unlike the low whistles, the high D/C has a block made of Delrin, with a curved windway formed by a channel cut into the top of the block - like those found in Susatos, Burkes, Swaynes and other whistles.

The rest of the head however is a radical departure from most designs - in fact as far as I know it is a Reyburn innovation. The blade (or "splitting edge") is formed by the top of the brass tube, with the maple cut away to reveal this edge - rather like a dress with a plunging V-neckline showing a flash of brass - and sculpted to form a ramp. Unlike Burke and Susato whistles, the top of the tube doesn't appear to be bent down or shaped in any way. Ronaldo told me he hit on this idea while pondering how to achieve maximum consistency in making the whistles.

The wooden head is bonded to the brass tube with a strong waterproof glue. (The bond will need to be strong, I imagine, to cope with possible differential expansion of the wood and metal. Ronaldo tells me that the joint has stood up to tests which have included cycles of deep-freezing followed by oven-heating to 100 deg. F.)

Below the head the tube enters a short tuning slide into which the interchangeable bodies fit snugly. There are no O-rings, but there is a small dimple punched into the underside of the tuning slide to help achieve a good fit. (I found a dab of cork/tuning-slide grease to be useful.) The rest of the body looks like a well-finished Generation-style whistle, although the tubing is slightly wider.

Another feature is the "perturbed bore" - an alarming term which as you all know, whistlemaker Michael Burke has introduced into our collective consciousness. In this whistle, there are in fact two perturbations - rings fitted inside the top of the detachable body and at the top of the brass tube inside the head.

I wouldn't give the whistle top marks for elegance, since I find that its wooden head, although nicely made, looks rather chunky and a little ill at ease on the slender brass body. (But then I think that most high-end whistles are uglier. Many of them look as though they were designed by engineers of the Soviet army.) The Reyburn's tuning slide, I have to say, is very neatly done and quite discreet. Anyway you can make your own mind up from the photos supplied by Ronaldo. Elegance aside, I like having wood (and Delrin) between the lips and brass under the fingers.

Not shown on these photos is a decal with maker's logo which production models will have affixed to the tuning slide.

Playing characteristics

The first point to make is that the Reyburn high D is a very different animal from Reyburn low whistles. A couple of years ago I reviewed a Reyburn low G. I was impressed by the instrument's tonal possibilities, and gave it an essentially positive review. Subsequently, however, as a result of its slow response and non-standard fingering characteristics, I abandoned it(*). The high whistle not only has a very different sound, but - happily - very different playing characteristics, and no nonstandard fingering quirks.

• Sound. If you want a pure tone with no or very little chiff, this whistle is not for you. There is a lot of air, overtones and character in the sound. Reminiscent of a Clarke original, though with more richness, and without the "hollow" quality that I associate with the sound of conical whistles. I am very fond of the Reyburn's breathy sound, and find the instrument very satisfying to play as a result. At the foot of this review are links to some soundclips.
• Volume. The whistle is moderately loud. It is quieter than an Overton D, Water Weasel or a Susato. But it is considerably more powerful than anything of the Generation variety. I've found the volume to be adequate for sessions in noisy pubs, but without hurting anyone's ears.
  The bottom end is quite strong, and naturally things get stronger as you go up. However the balance is good and the top B is really quite sweet - the chiff and harmonics seem to fall off a tad as you go up the scale. The problem of over-strident top A and B notes - common in many louder whistles - is completely absent.
• Response. Lightning-fast - subjectively about as fast as a Generation Eb, and nothing is faster than that. This makes the whistle a delight to play. Ornaments definitely crackle and pop.
• C-natural. A good cross-fingered C-natural can be obtained with either my preferred fingering, oxx xox, or "Feadan's favourite", oxx ooo. The two-handed version sounds bang-on to me, the one-handed one a smidgin sharper, but still very usable, especially if you underblow it (a tiny amount).
• Tuning: tuning is excellent and the second octave is very well tuned with the first. Often cylindrical whistles will easily produce a second-octave note that is quite flat, and you really need to push the note to bring it into tune. Not so with this whistle - spot-on octaves are obtained effortlessly. I don't know if this is due to the "bore perturbations", or to the air throughput, but it's a very welcome attribute. The tuning slide allows a wide range of movement - 40 cents either side of A=440, according to Ronaldo.
• Stability of high B. You can't destabilize the top B by putting down your sixth finger. Nor is cutting and rolling on the top B liable to produce squawking. (These are major faults that I encounter in a quite a few louder whistles.)
• The windway does not clog. On prolonged nonstop playing a drop or two of condensed whatever sometimes seeps out on the underside of the tuning slide, but no clogging.
• Air requirements.The Reyburn high D does require more air than most whistles. Now I find I've been enjoying this characteristic - there's something very satisfying about putting a good flow of air through the whistle, about being able to push the sound out. (A different feeling from the equally satisfying "back pressure" that I like so much about Overtons.) But it takes a little getting used to and conscious attention to breathing at first, otherwise you can get caught out partway through a tune - especially in high parts.
  I haven't tried to assess the matter very precisely, but I'd say that the air requirements are very similar to those of a correctly set-up traditional Clarke C. I did conduct a hasty comparison by playing 32 bars of "The Galway Rambler" (twice through the tune) at a fast clip on several whistles. After a good lungful to start with, I consciously tried to take as few breaths as possible, while still playing the tune properly. I found I needed to take 2 breaths (sometimes 3) on a Generation, 5 on a Clarke C, 4 (sometimes 5) on the Reyburn D, and the biggest surprise of all, only 2 (sometimes only 1!) on the most powerful of them all, an Overton modal D/C.
• The D and C bodies play equally well. I find the timbre, power and overall feel of the D a little more satisfying.

In summary

This instrument plays exceptionally well and has a great whistle-like sound. It has no vices that I have been able to discover (and believe me, I have tried hard) except for an occasional drop of moisture leaking from the tuning slide. The fact that it takes a little more air than most whistles? I can easily live with it. Of course if Mr. Reyburn could reduce the air requirement without affecting the sound and playability, he might just have made the perfect whistle. (Ha! A logical impossibility, of course.)

A few weeks back I watched Brazil win the world cup soccer final with the help of two goals from their ace striker Ronaldo. Has another Ronaldo has scored a goal with this whistle? Certainly he is aiming at what I see as a definite gap in the market - the gap being the absence of an assertive, chiffy but well-behaved tunable whistle to suit the needs of experienced players.

I give the whistle a very high mark. If, like me, you favour the tone and playing characteristics of good old cheap traditional whistles and feel that most high-end offerings sound a little dull in comparison, this might be the maker's whistle you're looking for.

*The low G that I reviewed has since been superseded by a new narrow-bore version, one of which Ronaldo has sent me as a trade. It improves considerably on the old model in many respects on - but that's another story.
Back to footnote mark in text.

Sound clips

I played these tunes in my dining room and recorded them on a minidisc recorder. The low-level background noise occurred when I uploaded to the clips to my PC. I haven't tried to filter this out, since I wanted these to be completely unretouched recordings - no reverb added, no noise filtering. "Noises off" and mistakes left intact too!

Scale and air - Cape Clear (D body) 238kb
Jig - Merrily kissed the Quaker (D body) 232kb
Jig - Banish misfortune (D body) 210kb
Scale and air - The dark slender boy (C body) 311kb
Jig - Gillan's apples (C body) 156kb

Back to top