A friend sent me one of these little toys for my birthday, and I was wondering if there was a way to reduce the volume and air requirement without damaging the whistle itself? Cos A. I’m living in a dorm and B. I don’t have the lung capacity of an olympic marathon runner. 
Sam, have you tried the blue tac trick?
–James
P.S. If you decide you don’t like that whistle well enough to keep it, please drop me a PM.
Nah, Davy would cry if I sold/traded it. He’s a little wierd like that.
This is supposed to be a high end whistle, yet it takes more blow than two Clarke originals. To my ear this whistle should be mounted on a train.
The air requirement could probably be fixed by Phil Hardy–why don’t you write him on or off-board?
As for the sound volume, it’s one of the loudest whistles around; try blue tack, or the paperclip…
Or send the whole pack to Jerry Freeman, I’m sure he could solve both of your problems.
Great… that would make it a rock’n roll whistle. Now I didn’t know trains whistled in D. So, my ear gotta be wrong–or yours. Or you just meant it sounds breathy?
I could probably get used to the air requirement (and to be perfectly honest, I have niether the time, money, nor inclination to mail the whistle to anybody, even Hardy), it’s just the volume that’s really a big problem. How exactly does this “paperclip” trick work?
Please also explain exactly what the “blue tack” procedure is.
Thanks 
paperclip: try this link and the related ones (do a search for “paperclip”).
Blue tack: take a small clip of Blue Tack (or UHU Patafix if in Europe, opt. beeswax, chewing gum, even earwax if you’re really in the sticks 
), just stick it over the blade of the whistle. The more you mask the blade the more you mute. Adjustable, reversible, doesn’t alter too much the sound character of the whistle.
This really doesn’t sound normal. None of my Chieftains require a lot of air. They need a bit of pressure to sound properly, but the back-pressure keeps the air requirement from being very high. Even on my bass-Bb, I can run all the way through the A part of a tune without taking a breath, and I definitely do not have a the lungs of a marathon runner.
I’d suggest dropping a line to Phil Hardy.