The tale of the Broken Arrow
Stacey–you know, the chef, CEO, chifftain and fipplartist at Alba Whistles–devised a nice personal feature to this new low D I ordered.
You may call it a case of motorbikers’ masonry : she thought my strapping of low whistles on the pillion seat with a bungie cord may be not the safest transport for a whistle. Or the best to keep it warm until arrived at the pub.
So she made this low D non only cut to be tunable, but also splitting in-between the third and fourth holes. Great: now the longer section is only 235 mm (some 9 in.1/4), shorter than a regular pennywhistle. The three pieces fit nicely, safe and warm, in the breast pocket of the Barbour jacket, or the side pocket of my phot-hog’s gadget bag. When assembled, the seam of the lower section is hard to see, so it doesn’t hit the fingers.
There was also some strange design on the lower end, like an invert flare, but later on this.
I try out the whistle immedaitely, of course. Great Alba’s sound, but with with an extra bit of back-pressure adding the resonance of a fog-horn. So I wouldn’t call it exactly “typical” Alba low D sound; more like “Honk if you’re horny, dear President.”
Cool damp spring mornings are tough on whistles: lot of condensation. So, at some point, I shake the juice out, as usual : hand on the tube, with the thumb and forefinger securely clasped on the head, and give it an energetic shake… like batting for a home run.
“Whizz!” went the third detachable section I forgot about. It flew up vertically, bounced on the ceiling oak beam, near-missed the window, crashed on the tiled floor, then gracefully rebounded to smash its other end as well.
Talking of disaster! When I looked, the prodigal tube was crushed flat on both ends. In shock, I still clenched on the rest of the whistle, until I realized I had no real use for an overbore tabor pipe in A flat…
Well, this did teach me. I use SWABS to dry my whistles, now.
Incidentally, a look at the ruins of an Alba Low D also gave a good laugh to a visiting llama. Gossiping camel cousine, too: so, hearing the story, Stacey had also a good laugh, started making fun of my “broken arrow”. I guess that also taught me, like not to expect brotherly Christian sympathy from them female knnniggets…
I packed the triple split corpse in a nice cardboard, then sent it back to Scotland so it would get a decent funeral in the land of its ancestors. Well, instead of this, Stacey decided to resurrect the “Broken arrow”. It probably took a lot of work, annealing and all, but maybe sh’ell explain the processes herself.
It came back here a couple days ago. Plays as well, or even better as new.
One detail I did not immediately notice, before the first, careful and gentle swabbing over my thickest carpet. Now, it looks much better, too. Stacey added a nice touch of “fipple art” to the mouthpiece. Care to see it? Check my new avatar 
