I am traveling to western Ireland(Dingle and Doolin) in Dec. Is there
a particular store or establishment in either area where I could
buy a low D whistle? Also, what whistles would someone recommend
in the $125-200 range?
Don’t know about Ireland, but Scotland is only a short hop away and Stacey at Alba Whistles makes a GREAT Low D in the lower part of your price range…
I remember two music shops in Doolin, I know one of them carried quite a few instruments but I don’t know which low whistle brands. There are also stores in Ennis (Custy’s Music) and Galway (Four Corners Music - I think - in the pedestrian area) if you end up in those locations.
There is the Roundstone Bodhran shop in Roundstone but they don’t let people try the wind instruments. At all, no exceptions - I tried. Very disappointing, and I told them they lost a sale because of it. Dingle has Cillian O’Brian’s shop in it, you could try his low whistles. You could also go to Shannaquay in Adare as they have a good selection but I was less than thrilled with my visit for other reasons.
As Beth above said, Custy’s and Powell’s at the four corners are your best shots. Some shops in Dingle will have some whistles too.
I don’t care at all for low whistles but as far as I know you’ll find chieftains and Ian Lambes in Custy’s and whistles made by a French guy, I am not sure he does low ones though.
Frances Custy is fair enough though, she’ll usually tell you you’re better off with a generation, ‘like everybody else’.
Powell’s in Galway has a variey of low ones but as I said I haven’t a clue about them so I never looked at them closely.
You’ll find Susatos and Dixons more widely stocked[ please note ‘more widely’ is a relative thing which means you amy find a few shops apart from the ones mentioned that have them]
There is a shop in Ballyvaughan that stocks a few low whistles, I actually was up there a few hours ago and it seemed closed for the winter. Same for the Doolin trad shop, this afternoon it was not actually open, I had a quick hello how are you and all that with Orla , the owner. She may open fo the weekends. The other place, Magnetic music, well, for several reasons not my sort of music shop to be honest, last time I was in there they had no low whistles.
Hmmm, and what those reasons might be? 
Hi, I was in a music shop in Dublin the other day & the Ian Lambe low whistles were highly recommended to me. He lives in Clare.
Have a look at this site:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~mirian/ilambe/
Hope you find a nice whistle,
Dublingirl
Why go to the West Coast of Ireland to buy a low whistle? That’s not where the best ones are made. The low whistle as we know it today was reinvented by Bernard Overton and also developed early on by Brian Howard both of whom are English. Colin Goldie now makes Overtons in Germany. Michael Grinter operates in Australia, Michael Burke and Michael Copeland operate in the United States. Reyburns also come from the States. In your price range I’d recommend an Overton, a Burke or a Reyburn depending on what kind of sound you want. Going all the way to Ireland when you can get one at home is just adding unnecessarily to your costs. By all means visit Ireland, but not to buy a low whistle.
There is the Roundstone Bodhran shop in Roundstone but they don’t let people try the wind instruments. At all, no exceptions - I tried. Very disappointing, and I told them they lost a sale because of it.
I find that disappointing also. When me and a friend where there last year, they let us play a low D in the sound room. Neither of us is an accomplished player or anything but, a couple people asked us whistle questions after we came out.
Would do them good if they kept a few extra’s on the side for customers to try out with the fore warning that they have been mouthed before. Guess there are many kinds of paranoia.
The prohibition on trying out mouth-blown instruments is not a shopkeeper’s whim, it is due to public health regulations, which have been in place for over twenty-five years. But, like a lot of laws - notably pub closing hours - it is applied with varying degrees of consistency in different parts of the country.
I add to what I wrote above that I was in Powell’s/the Four Corners in Galway on saturday adn they stock Dixons, Susatos, Chieftains, something theat looked like a Brass Chieftain and one or two other ones but I don’t know what they are. Really the usual suspects and unless you are in Galway nothing to go out of your way for. They have a great selection of books and Sean Nos recordings though.
Ah, that’s interesting. So, let’s say the shopkeeper were to keep a “tried before” whistle in a special place and clean them with javex or whatever and put them back to try, would that be a “legal procedure” or it is just forbidden whatever you do? Some shops in Montreal do just that, I remember trying a whistle at some place and the guy there just asked me to leave the few whistles I tried on his desk so that he could clean them up.
I don’t know, but I suspect that the law (or local authority regulation or whatever it is) probably errs on the side of caution and assumes that anyone who promises to disinfect between users won’t do so in practice. It’s a bit like speed limits - they set them unduly low on the assumption that everyone will break them, so - hey presto! - everybody does.
In fact, the more I think of it, the more likely it seems to me that what happened circa 25 years ago wasn’t new legislation at all but a renewed attempt to enforce existing rules that had fallen into disuse. Right up to the early 1960s there was a lot of (historically justified) fear about transmission of tuberculosis, and when I was a kid people were very conscious of the risk of infection through sharing chipped cups, there were notices in all the buses (in Irish!) telling people not to spit etc.