The one that was free from the maker!
Not really,most of the people that review whistles on here give an honest and constructive opinion on what they review,regardless as to weather they get a freebie or not.
You will find the whistle community are very honest and forthright when it comes to giving opinions on these pesky little instruments.
Instead of making oblique allegations, suggesting that reviewers are on the take, why don’t you cite a review that you see as an egregious example? Tell us the points on which you disagree, and why you think the reviewer’s judgement was suspect.
Did someone write a glowing review of a whistle that no reasonable person would? Did someone describe a “Yugo” in terms that apply to a Rolls-Royce?
It is standard practice for most reviewers to purchase the item reviewed anonymously, so that the manfacturer cannot supply a better that average product for review. In the case when the product is supplied without cost to a reviewer, it is customary to return the item to the manufacturer or donate to charity.
Your honour, the witness is evading the question!
For stuff where the reviewers actually get paid for their opinion, that’s what they ought to do. The reviewers on C&F that come to mind state openly how they got the whistle. Aren’t people grown up enough to factor that in with their reading of the review?
Are you aware that this is not the case?
I’ll grant you that whistle makers get some free press from those who review their whistles. I also think it’s true that if a reviewer puts out garbage for information, they will soon be pilloried on this forum.
Again, I challenge you to identify instances where you think a reviewer has written in bad faith. If the review is offered for free on an open forum, where people with a different experience can challenge blatant propaganda, I don’t see the harm.
I’m relatively new to this forum (not to C&F readership, or other whistle forums), but five posts to your name is pretty ballsy to start making insinuations. One of the three or four-digit posters, please feel free to flog me if I speak out of turn…
You noticed that too, eh?
Maybe Jan Erik is a frustrated whistle maker who can’t get anyone to review his stuff. I know I’m bummed that the two copper abominations I built in my garage wouldn’t stand up to a review by even the friendliest of reviewers.
Yeah, let’s all go for the lowest ethical standards.
Yeah, innuendo sucks, doesn’t it?
I would be happy if you answered the question presented so we can give you a legit reply. If you have an issue, dont beat around the bush
Maybe he’s just a bit shy Stewy :roll:
Hmm…I wonder…
In any case, I’m really only aware of 3 kind of “officalish” whistle reviewers that hang around on this site: Dale, myself, and James Peeples. My apologies if I left anyone off that list. I wonder which of us “Jan Erik” is talking to?
Now, I can only speak for myself, of course. But I’ll try to talk a bit about the review thing.
I started out reviewing whistles I’d bought or otherwise came in contact with here on C&F, and some on Gaelic Crossings. When I realized that I had actually made a number of reviews, and that many of them were being lost to time, I tried my best to get as many as I could, and put them on my website where they wouldn’t be lost, under the impression that some people might find them useful. I had originally asked some of the posters if i could include their reviews as well..this was proably 2003ish. Jessie K said I could use some of her reviews, but I ultimately decided that it was much simpler, copyright-wise, if i just kept my own reviews up. I knew it would grow slowly, as I could afford to get more whistles.
Eventually, some makers approached me out of the blue about reviewing their whistles. Granted, I did solicit those inquiries by mentioning that I was happy to review whistles for the site if someone wanted to send me one. I have since then sent a few letters of inquiry out myself, about whistles I was particuarly interested in.
As for reviewing whistles, somewhere in the neighborhood of a third of the whistles on my site are whistles I’ve reviewed because a maker sent me a review sample. But 5 of them are Jerry’s tweaks, so it really skews the sample. When I started getting these complimentary whistles, I immediately started listing where I got the whistle from, so there would be no ethical grey area of someone thinking I’d bought a whistle when I hadn’t.
I’ve bought whistles I was really happy with, such as the Greenwood and the Copeland..so those reviews really had nothing to do with whether the whistle was free or not.
I’ve gotten free whistles, or had exposure to whistles on whistle tour that
I wasn’t happy with, for one reason or another: The recent Jubilee whistle I had recently had a flaw in which I said that if I’d bought it, I would return it for a new body. I wasn’t happy with the first O’Brien that I played, and said so in my review. I wasn’t happy with a few things about the Alba SE I had for 3 weeks on tour.
However, I do try to couch my reviews in terms of characteristics rather than saying “This whistle sucks!” Because what I like in a whistle, others may not like, and vice versa. So I say “This whistle has high back pressure” or “This whistle doesn’t have much back pressure” rather than saying “This whistle sucks! I hate the level of backpressure!”
Now as for buying whistles anonymously, that’s kind of hard to do, unless you buy the cheaper ones. When I buy bigger-cost whistles, I prefer to buy directly from the maker when I can, because I know that they end up with more of the profit. Having been on that end of things myself once, I’m aware that most manufacturers of goods end up giving up half or more of the sticker price to middlemen before it reaches a store shelf. When I buy a whistle from a maker, I’m sure some of them know I’ve got a whistle website. But I’d guess most of them don’t. I don’t make an issue of the matter. I just buy a whistle just like anyone else does, by sending some money and my name and address. I don’t flatter myself that too many of them know my last name off the top of their heads and say to themselves “that Wanderer..he’s buying a whistle! I better send him my best one!” I imagine that to most makers it’s just another order they’re fulfilling, and they’re unaware that their whistle will likely be reviewed in a few weeks. And for people who’ve known me on the site for years probably know that I get most of my high-end whistles second-hand anyway, taking the maker completely out of the mix. The only whistle I’ve reviewed that I bought directly from a maker is the Greenwood.
As for my website: I do make a small profit from the ads on my website, which surprises me. I didnt’ expect that would be the case when I first put the ads up late last year (which means they’ve been running less than a year). I put the ads up because I ran the website on my own dime for the better part of 9 years (though for 2-3 of those years, it WAS on Geocities and got no updates…the shame!). That means even when I was out of work for 20-something months due to the internet bubble bursting, I still paid for my hosting service, I still paid to renew the domain, etc. To the tune of several hundred dollars. When I put up a donation link, and mentioned that all donations would go to baby food, 2 people donated. Someone from C&F donated $20 before I ever knew them (and I won’t mention who, because I don’t know if they want the attention), and some total stranger donated $5. $25.00 is what I made. And there were a few days during that time in which I didn’t eat dinner, to save a buck to make sure my wife and kid had plenty to eat. And I still pad to keep the website up and running, and this was before I started posting reviews on my website.
So when I saw that Google ads weren’t too obtrusive, I put up ads, hoping to make the thing come closer to paying for itself. And it does, now…but if we were tracking this like a traditional business, it’d probably be 2015 or so before I went into the black, if you count all the costs that I’ve incurred running the site.
It’s my stated goal to use any profits to buy whistles to review for the website. This year, I’ve put myself on Erik Tullberg’s waiting list with the profits I anticipate making, which should just about eat them up. Expect that review in 2007, unless miracles happen. Erik does know that I’ve ordered that one, because I had a conversation with him before I put it on order, but that’s not the norm. In all honesty, I could make more profits in a year if I mowed one lawn every two weeks in the summer, just like the kid up the block, for a lot less work.
In the case where “Jan Erik” says: “In the case when the product is supplied without cost to a reviewer, it is customary to return the item to the manufacturer or donate to charity.” I don’t think this is “customary” in a lot of industries. But I’ll be up front..it’s not customary for me. If I review a whistle that has been donated, I ask to keep the whistle. I say so right up front on my website. The only thing this “buys” you is a place in the front of the line. I have a few whistles (like a Burke and an Abell) that I paid for and I intend to review as soon as i can. But if a manufacturer is out of pocket by sending me a free whistle, I feel like I should do my best to give their whistle an honest review in a timely fashion. I can’t speak for James or Dale, but it seems to me that they likely keep the whistles they review as well. Though, like me, I would imagine that they’ve also bought many of the whistles they’ve reviewed.
I spend 1 or 2 weeks reviewing a whistle. That’s playing it at least an hour a day or more, writing notes and impressions. I spend probably another hour or two on photographs and photo editing (cropping, resizing, etc). And probably another 3-4 hours writing up the big review once I think I’ve got enough information. I spend between 1-3 hours recording, depending on if I’m sucking that day–some days, I have a hard time loosening up behind the mic. So, all in all, that’s probably in the neighborhood of 15-20 hours (give or take) I spend as dedicated work to write one of these reviews. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to get to keep a whistle in exchange, since I don’t get paid as a journalist to do this. Sometimes, I’ll make special exceptions. For instance, I didn’t keep all of Jerry’s whistles that I reviewed. I made a special deal with him, since he was sending me so many whistles to review. I ended up “earning” less than a dollar an hour in whistles reviewing those. So it’s not like I do this just for the free whistles. I could have made more money running to Houston for a weekend to spend 2 days programming at $75.00 an hour for an old boss, which I keep putting off because I’m worrying about getting reviews out in a timely fashion.
If I were in it for the free whistles, I wouldn’t keep getting on whistle tours, or borrowing whistles, or trying my hardest to get reviews done even if a “free whistle” is not forthcoming. I’ve reviewed a wooden Syn on tour, and an Alba SE. I reviewed an Alba low D on tour, also, though I later took that review down as being below my standards…I got it on tour while moving to Dallas, so I ended up with no pictures, no real recordings other than one 15 second video, and my remembered impressions, rather than notes I made as I was playing the whistle. I was on a Weston Copper tour, and gave my opinions privately, as us tour folks were asked to do, otherwise, I’d have reviewed that one too. I recently dropped out of a tour for Daniel Bingamon’s huge keyed whistle. But had it been a whistle brand he was selling, rather than a novelty, I would have stayed on the tour and reviewed that whistle, too. I’ve asked a couple of people if I could borrow whistles that are too popular to get free versions of, because the maker doesn’t need the extra “advertisement”. Why would I waste the time with these others if I’m getting free ones to keep? Because it’s not about the free whistles. It’s about getting my honest review to the 40,000 people or so a month who visit my website (and those who write me every day) and have come to view my website as an important resource. It’s what I hoped to be when I started the website when the Internet was still new, and it’s more than I ever dreamed I’d actually become. People link to me from all over the world…Denmark, Korea, Japan, Russia, the UK. I feel an obligation to do it right. And that’s the truth of it.
If anyone, even someone hiding behind a new account, wants to question me directly about my ethics, or anything about my review process or philosophy, they need only ask directly, and I’ll do my best to give a direct (if long-winded) response.
Greg
In a perfect world, reviewers would purchase the product anonymously. This avoids the temptation of the maker to take extra care on the product sent to the reviewer. For restaurant reviews anonymousity is standard. For certain expensive products, the manufacturer is usually contacted for a review unit. There is the inevitable temptation of cherry picking a nice unit to send out to the reviewer.
In the world of whistles where some brands are inconsistent, this is worth keeping in mind.
A totally separate issue is the recent appearance of what seem to me to be sock-puppet IDs here on Chiff. Unfortunately, I do not know of any reasonable way to police these. However, I weigh comments from a known ID with a known history differently, from what look like sock-puppets to me. I have no proof, but if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it might be a sock-puppet.
- A sock-puppet is an ID created by a veteran poster, to appear to be a separate and unique voice supporting his/her points, or to stir up trouble without leaving tracks.
- Bill
Everyone on the board knows that the majority of whistles that I play are produced by Phil Hardy. I had the opportunity to recently review the Kerry Songbird Low D.
I started my opening review with the following:
A few weeks ago Phil Hardy sent me a new Kerry Songbird Low D to review. As many of you know I am a big fan of Chieftain/Kerry Whistles having played, bought, traded and sold several over the last couple of years. So I was ecstatic to say the least to have been chosen to review this new whistle. Forgoing my bias for Chieftain/Kerry Whistles I sought to perform as objective review as possible.
This was my first review of a whistle on the board. Did he let me keep the whistle…yes, but he would have if I had written a bad review. If after the review he wanted it back…I would have sent it back to him. I did the review just for the thrill of testing a whistle from a maker I admire.
It was a pleasure and I would gladly do it for any maker and if they requested the whistle back following the review so be it and if they allow me to keep it than good for me.
I don’t beleive for a minute that anyone one the boards reviews the whistles just to keep them, but if that is so, than thats sad and not only leads to mistrust of a review, but damages the peer to peer evaulation process I think we have within this board…but like I said i don’t believe this has happened.
Am I the guilty party? 
I remember that one. I got it right after you. The original owner named it “Thundarr”, and it certainly lived up to its name! It was LOUD! 
I apparently liked Thundarr better than you did, but I’ll let your review be yours and mine be mine. It makes no sense to dispute another’s review, unless it looks like the reviewer obviously had an axe to grind.
My recent review (which may be the one being called into question, but I hope not) was, admittedly, for a whistle voluntarily sent to me by a maker that I’m on friendly terms with. Despite that, I tried to be objective as possible. I described it as being loud, with high back-pressure, and just left it up to the reader to decide if that is a whistle they would want. Of course, if you’re looking for a quiet, easy-blowing whistle, you will steer away from this one. However, if you’re as aggressive a player as I am, it should fit the bill perfectly. The maker told me that those characteristics were exactly what he was going for.
Also notice that I compared the characteristics to easily-available mass-production whistles, not to those of another maker.
I tried to do the best I can, but if I am to be considered an untrustworthy reviewer, I will avoid putting reviews on this forum from now on and leave that up to the “official” reviewers.
not at all! At least as far as I’m concerned. IF you’re asking this of “Jan Erik”, I apologize..since you’re quoting me, I’ll reply from my perspective 
In fact, no one should think I was pointing the finger in my post. I was only thinking of myself (how selfish!) and my own reviews when I wrote my note. I wasn’t trying to point to anyone else and say that they should, would, or could do something different. Just trying to answer, as a known reviewer, “Jan Erik”'s innuendo.
Absolutely! 
Everyone has different tastes, and things they like about whistles. I think that’s why it’s good to have multiple resources to find out about them.
It’s not, again as least as far as I’m concerned..in fact, I had to go back and search the message board to see which post you were talking about. It was for a Serpent whistle, and since they’re not yet on my “buy” list, I didn’t read the review. 
So it really wasn’t you, from my perspective anyway. (Nothing against Serpents, but my current “buy” wants tend toward wood these days–though I am still vaguely interested in a village smithy..I wonder how that’d be taken at Renaissance Faires)
Now I can’t say which of us “Jan Erik” was slagging, but perhaps they’ll do more than mealy mouth innuendos and instead will say what’s on their mind.
I personally think anyone should review any whistle they can…the more the merrier. I only used “official-ish” as a term, since we’re guys with websites devoted to it. Far as I’m concerned, I’m happy every time someone posts a review…For me, it’s all about getting the information out there, so it’s not “competition” when other folks write reviews, but “cooperation”
When I have reviewed whistles, rather than a “good / bad” review, I try to find the strengths of a whistle, try to find out what it does well, what it does better than other whistles, maybe even what makes it unique.
Instruments that don’t do anything well either don’t get reviewed or don’t get a very pretty review. Probably the most fun I ever had reviewing an instrument was of a god-awful-bad ebonite Pakistani “D” flute. There was simply nothing good about it, from the way it smelled, to the way it played–well, it’s hard to say which way it stank the worse. I had that review on flutesite for ages, complete with sound samples that would just about make your toenails fall off, and a lot of folks emailed me to thank me for warning them off from purchasing a perfectly awful and unplayable instrument.
I have purchased whistles, and I have been loaned whistles, and I have been given whistles. I treat them all the same way in my reviews. But in all honesty there really aren’t many whistles I’ve tried that I just absolutely hated, so you won’t find many bad reviews out there of whistles from me.
Exceptions were one perfectly awful Feadog–but I have since bought another one which is much much better–and the fact that, except for a few “good” ones, I’m not fond of Generation whistles, because you have to buy so many to get the few that play well. Even with the Gens, though, it seems as though their quality control has seen real improvement over the last several years, as the last several Gens I bought were fine.
So there you have how I approach my reviews in a nutshell: here’s a whistle. Let’s see what it will do. If it doesn’t do anything particularly well, lets lay it aside for a few months, and try it again later. If it still doesn’t do anything particularly well, it probably won’t get reviewed, and usually I’ll notify the maker with my gripes, in the hopes that they can fix it in future whistles. Usually though I like a new whistle fine and can quickly find things about it that are unique strengths.
–James
Rather than be critical of reviewers “Officalish” or otherwise, I think they deserve thanks for a great deal of hard work. As a newbie I found reviews extremely helpful and at no time did I think that a “free” whistle merited a good review, most were open as to how said whistle was acquired. You cannot try before you buy therefore some indication of how a whistle sounds and the level of build quality is essential.
As to free advertising it hardly compares with big business or for that matter “chat show” advertising and whistlesmiths are not in business to be millionaires, a little leeway wouldn’t hurt, one commercial post on the forum is prefectly Ok.
Let’s hear it for the Reviewers
D
Me, too. Full agreement.