I’ve had the Anderson tour whistle for about a week now and finally got some time to get better acquainted with it over the weekend.
Brad tells me that the wood of this whistle is called Bendee, in the Acacia family (like a lot of the other hard Australian woods). This is a very hard wood with a very nice reddish brown coloring with darker grain lines.
Brad has taken care to match up the grain on the head and body pieces so it’s obvious that this was made from a single piece of wood. The fittings are all shiny, simple stainless steel with rather wide bands at the center joint. The head ferrule or sleeve is somewhat larger in diameter than the other bands, and the lip undercut is a simple straight cut affair. The fipple looks like black acetal (generic for Delrin). The “ramp” or edge is rather short and steep. Finger holes are nice and sharply drilled (Brad, what do you use for this?). Others have posted pictures of Anderson whistles, so I won’t bother now. Suffice it to say that it’s a very handsome whistle with Brad’s distinctive “A” branded on the front of the head. This brand is also on the nice wooden case that the whistle comes in.
Overall, the workmanship is excellent, especially considering that Brad is a self taught newbie at this. There are a few cosmetic flaws eg where the fipple fits into the head, but nothing really worrisome.
The whistle plays nicely with a bit of backpressure. It has a nice sweet sound and is not overly loud: it may get lost in a large session, but in a small group it should do just fine. Both octaves play easily. I didn’t test it on the tuning meter, but I played a lot of tunes from classical to Celtic to folk and I didn’t hear any out-of-tunedness.
So, although I’d love to tell you that this is just another wooden whistle maker that you should avoid 
I won’t. Brad makes some nice whistles and I expect that we’ll be hearing a lot from him in the future. Well done, mate!
WVWhistler-- I’ll ship this whistle to you in the next day or so.