The sound difference between brass and aluminum is pretty clear, and it just makes me wonder about silver. I’d love to hear how a silver one sounds, and it occurs to me, the price of silver isn’t THAT high. The raw metal would only cost about $50, by my estimation. Makes me wonder why no one offers one. Maybe they sound terrible? Anyone encountered one before?
Silver whistles have been available, silver Copelands and Sindts notably. Erik Tulberg (who posted here as ErikT, IIRC) made a model of his own design. Probably others I can’t remember right now
I always had the impression their attractiveness was more determinedby peoples’ magpie syndrome than the acoustic qualities of the material.
I believe spiralling silver prices made them less viable.
The spot price on silver is currently $65 an ounce, plus or minus depending on when you look.
For a D whistle you’d need between 1.5oz and 3.25oz+, depending on the style of whistle being made: A tube for a whistle with a plastic head would be on the low end and a Copeland style all silver whistle (except for the block) would be on the higher end. So, cost would be considerably more than $50 in silver, particularly in light of the fact that you are unlikely to find manufactured silver tubing or sheet silver at spot prices. Typically silver whistles are quite expensive.
Not to worry though, there isn’t a massive difference in tone. I’ve played several silver D whistles, including a Copeland and a Humphrey, and while both were quite nice, neither was radically different from their counterparts made from other metals. To my ear silver is quite similar to nickel - a bit brighter sounding than brass, that’s all.
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The price for an ounce of silver is given in Troy ounces, which is 31.1 grams, so it’s a bit misleading. I believe the Lir Pro is 50 grams, but I could be wrong. I guess $50 was way too low, esp since silver is a lot heavier than aluminum, but I bet it ends up it’s closer to $50 than $500.
Regardless, it’s interesting it sounds like nickel. Good to know. I’ve been wondering for a while.
What, do you work for the CME? 
I trade silver futures, I am familiar, just didn’t want to get into the weeds over the minor difference.
I’ve also had some experience buying silver sheet, and speaking with those who buy silver tube stock. It’s generally more expensive than you’d expect if you haven’t shopped for it previously. And that was before the run up to $120.+ in January. I imagine supplies of the silver products we are talking about may be pricing in recent and current volatility. But I haven’t looked at silver sheet and tube in some time.
Anyway, from the practical side, most people don’t want to pay the premium for silver whistles, so most makers avoid it. To the best of my recollection, the majority of silver whistles I’ve seen over the years have been at least $100 higher than the standard brass or aluminum whistle by the same maker, while some like the Copelands, have been multiple hundreds more. You can search the forum archives to see the prices.
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I have a silver Sindt and a brass Sindt. The silver one has a sterling silver body tube and a stainless steel head. The brass one has a brass head and body tube. To my ear they do sound very slightly different to each other, but the difference is tiny, and to be honest, I think I prefer the sound of the brass one.
I got both mine used, in a batch of 18 whistles (half of which were low ones), for a total of $70 from the Goodwill site. But that is another story.
Based on this first hand experience, I personally would not spend the extra for a silver whistle, especially at today’s prices. Musically, I don’t think it makes a significant difference.
And I also wouldn’t recommend spending the rest of your life waiting for a deal like that to come up again on the Goodwill site. Those kind of opportunities are very few and far between.
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Yeah I think my math was off in the first place, and I didn’t account for the fact it would need to be made into a sheet first 
I had a silver tully, it was beautifully made and fun to play. Like many, it was traded for something else, etc. I have an O’Riordan c/d/e flat set with silver tubes that were made by Sindt. It’s lovely but I’m not sure it’s the silver as there are just so many variables involved.
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What’s the difference, essentially, between a regular wall solid silver whistle and a heavy-wall brass whistle, if the design is exactly the same for both in all other aspects? The very slight difference that silver would give, would be extremely minimal, difficult to detect, and not worth the price difference. The silver is heavy, therefore absorbing less vibration from the air frequency rippling through it. The range of whistles that do this is commonly known; heavier materials than the average. There are also “heavy wall” whistles from various brands. The addition of brass tuning slides and metal ferrules added for strength or protection around joints and the low end of the whistle, all add weight to the instrument.
I would make a bizarre suggestion here and say trying using a regular brass or aluminum whistle and attaching some more metal, for weight, to it, somewhere along the length of it. Preferably the entire length, such as a metal strip along the bottom opposite to the note holes, and the bottom end gets a loop of metal for protection. That could considerably change the weight of the instrument, which changes the response characteristics of the brass/aluminum and the whistle tone should be shifted. Experimenters, any experience with this to report?
There is more on the subject of material/sound than you can possibly imagine. There are so many variables, even when swapping a whistle body and using the same mouthpiece. Hole position, wall thickness, condition of the interior surface (rough, smooth, and all variations) and likely more. It doesn’t seem likely that you can pick up a ‘whole’ whistle made of one material and compare to another - no matter how ‘identical’ you might think they are and come to the conclusion that the material is what you are hearing. BUT, it must make a difference, otherwise flute players wouldn’t prefer silver, organbuilders wouldn’t prefer tin over lead or vice versa. It’s music, and your experience is unique.
Just a couple of thoughts; any whistle made with a silver tube over the last 20-30 years, probably would not have been made anywhere close to the same thickness of the brass versions of the same whistle, purely for cost of the silver sheet. Makers and jewelers, etc were always complaining about the price of silver and gold going up, and unless they were being paid upfront to cover such expenditures, I doubt many went for the very thick sheet like they did for heavy brass tubing. So the silver version would probably sound different enough just for the thickness of the metal. I wouldn’t mind comparing the Copeland versions myself and seeing how they differed! But don’t ask for them back! I let one go to another Chiffer for a nice price, just because I had been given a good deal on that one myself! My good deed for the century. Ha!
Also adding metal to the body of a whistle might just deaden it a bit, instead of improving the tone, just like some tunable whistles don’t sound quite as good or lively as the tunable ones with big ferrules on them for tuning collars. Sometimes slight differences, and probably only heard by the player, not his audience. My 2 cents, anyway.
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Most makers would buy tubing, rather than sheet and then form it into tubing. I mention sheet because a few makers have done this, but not many. I think maybe Copeland did early on, but not sure if he continued that way later.
Of the few makers I’ve spoken with who make both brass and silver whistles, all have said they use the same size tubing for both. I’ve measured the brass and silver tubing thickness of Gary Humphrey’s D whistles, and they are the same. Since most makers use prefabricated tubing for their whistles, they are at the mercy of silver tubing suppliers with regards to what sizes are available, unless they want to go to the expense of ordering custom size tubing in a larger quantity than is likely practical for most whistle makers. This being the case I think this is likely also a factor in why there are rarely anything other than a few keys available for silver whistles.
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I agree with Peter, Loren and others on the material not affecting tone much.
I’ve got a silver Humprhey (RIP) Stealth III whistle. Silver tube, acetal mouthpiece. Humphrey whistles are very nice, but I can’t say the silver really did anything for the tone.
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I should note: the only reason I got the silver one is because nickel always feel slippery to me, but I knew the silver tarnish would give the whistle a nice secure matte finish in my hands.
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There are categories of things that contribute to sound and tonal differences, and to a large degree these can be understood and then sorted acoustically, by ear, in order to filter, for example, what the tubing is contributing to the sound, vs other parameters. It’s sort of a large subject, so I’ll just give one example:
Smoothness of the bore vs material of the tube. For wood instruments (whistles, flutes, recorders, etc.) the different woods produce slightly different tones. Whether or not a person can hear this and/or recognize these differences is another topic, but assuming this is true (and I know it to be so), there are characteristics to the tone of each wood - volume, frequency range, etc.
So an instrument made of any of those woods, will sound like that wood. If the bore is very smoothly polished it will sound very lively (for that species of wood) due to higher reflectivity in the bore, while a roughly finished bore, or one that started smooth and then got rough over time, will have a duller sound than the one with the polished bore. However both of these instruments will still have the sound characteristics of the wood, only the reflectivity will be different, which is a thing, that you can hear if you have ear for it. Put another way Blackwood is going to sound like Blackwood and not boxwood, regardless of whether or not the bore reflectivity is changed, unless that change is massive.
Tubing thickness has sound characteristics. Multiple parameters related to dimensions of the windway and labium have sound characteristics that are distinct from what tubing material contributes to the sound. The thing is, most people don’t get the opportunity to listen to instruments being played before and after just one variable is changed, so they have no way to sort out what’s what, and then make the mistake of making assumptions. I don’t mean that as any sort of slight, it’s a natural response in the absence of more information.
I have spent 45 years in the pipe organ business, mostly as a voicer and tonal finisher (on the site voicing). This is a fascinating subject that has been debated forever. Like your appreciation of certain woods, the difference in high and low tin alloys is remarkable, owing as you say not only to the material itself, but the thickness, the quality of the interior of the pipes, whether planed, burnished or linen-finish from the casting table, etc. I recall a study someone did once that declared that organ pipes with bodies (not the business end, obviously) of cardboard are just as good as any other material. Thanks for the response, Loren.
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You’re right, Loren, probably most makers did use tubing for that reason, though I was mainly thinking about Copeland, and his conical bore whistles, especially the low keys. That would have been easier to make using sheet, don’t you think? I don’t know if anyone has measured Copeland’s silver bodies, but I would be surprised to find them the same thickness as the brass. But I’ve been surprised before too. Good point about the few keys available in those prefabricated tubes because of manufacturing limits of sizing and therefore thickness as well.
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I took a close look at my silver and brass Sindt whistles and can confirm that the tubing is seamless, not formed from sheet, and the dimensions of the silver and brass tubes are almost identical. The silver tube is actually 0.03 mm thicker in its wall thickness, leading to a bore that is 0.09 mm narrower. The OD of the tubes is identical.
I know this math doesn’t quite add up, but that is basically down to the difficulty in accurately measuring such tiny differences. To all intents and purposes, I think they are about as close to identical as you can get when buying in tubing (or sheet for that matter). So, I think this basically backs up Loren’s statements above, in the case of Sindt whistles too.
And I agree with his statements in the following post about different woods. I’ve been in the privileged position of having several different models of flute (Pratten replicas, Rudall replicas, and replicas of an antique American flute by Riley) all together at the same time with each one replicated in half a dozen or so different kinds of woods. I’ve played them a lot, back to back in the same acoustic space, and I’ve had some other flute playing friends over so they can try them and I can listen. The differences in tonal quality are tiny, but they are there, and once your ear tunes in to them you can certainly tell the difference and consistently distinguish between certain woods, even across different models of flute, and as a player or a listener.
Having said that, you can’t necessarily arrive at a conclusion about which is best. Each has its own character, and they are all nice in their own way, some perhaps being better for certain preferences or situations. To be honest, I was a little surprised by how small the differences are, and by how consistently you can recognize them. But I can’t argue with the evidence. It has been pretty compelling.
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Yes, and sterling sounds fantastic. I have a sterling Copeland D that I replaced a nickel Copeland with, because it sounds SO much better. A friend, also a whistler, tried it and immediately said “I shouldn’t have played it” because he, to had Copeland high D in nickel. He sold the nickel version for the sterling almost immediately and got the sterling. This was 25 years ago and that high D is still one of my first choices for a large session because it cuts through. (I recently, finally, go a set of ORIordan’s, they are in the mix now, too. ) Happy hunting for that sound you want and please update if you make one of sterling!
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I’m selling a Sterling Silver Recorder on Reverb https://reverb.com/item/95591207-gyula-foky-gruber-silberton-solid-sterling-tunable-soprano-recorder-whistle-1960s
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