Hello dear soul-mates.
Last summer I bought a wonderful Chiftain low D in Killarney (County Kerry, Ireland). The sound and playability of this whistle is great in my oppinion. But there is one problem however. It’s badly off-tune, accually the tuning is closer to low E-flat than to low-D. This makes it impossible to play with it on concerts with my band (“Tunes of Lore”). What should I do now. Can I send it back to Chiftain for re-tuning?? And what could be the reason for this problem? As far as I can remember, it hasn’t always been like this, and I haven’t treated it badly in any way.
Well, I’d be happy for replies.
Cheers… //Henke
I had one and it was in tune.
It’s hard to speculate but
surely you should get hold
of the maker…
Send it back to be fixed or replace, most definitly. For what you paid for the thing, it should at least be in tune.
These things suffer this problem. It’s hit and miss. It’s an over-priced Clarke in my opinion. Spend your next $100+ on a Burke or Overton.
On 2003-02-27 18:29, Whitmores75087 wrote:
These things suffer this problem. It’s hit and miss. It’s an over-priced Clarke in my opinion. Spend your next $100+ on a Burke or Overton.
Bollocks.
I have four Chieftains, all are dead-on in tune in all respects.
What strikes me as curious is that he says it used to be in tune, but no longer is. I’m not sure how you could do that to a solid metal whistle.
Bollocks.
I agree! 
Generalizations like the one above are hardly very constructive.
What strikes me as curious is that he says it used to be in tune, but no longer is. I’m not sure how you could do that to a solid metal whistle.
Mary Bergin says this happens to her whistles too! Although, I am not sure I believe her either… 
Seriously, perhaps Henke have (over time) started playing the whistle in a different way, eg. begun to blow it harder than at first? Perhaps it is generally being played in warmer locations now than at first?
Jens
On 2003-02-27 16:44, Henke wrote:
Hello dear soul-mates.
Last summer I bought a wonderful Chiftain low D in Killarney (County Kerry, Ireland). The sound and playability of this whistle is great in my oppinion. But there is one problem however. It’s badly off-tune, accually the tuning is closer to low E-flat than to low-D. This makes it impossible to play with it on concerts with my band (“Tunes of Lore”). What should I do now. Can I send it back to Chiftain for re-tuning?? And what could be the reason for this problem? As far as I can remember, it hasn’t always been like this, and I haven’t treated it badly in any way.
Well, I’d be happy for replies.
Cheers… //Henke
Just contact the maker at Kerrywhistles.com.
I will add one more thing.
If you are serious enough to be recording with a band, you really should have a tunable whistle, regardless of the maker.
I do have a lot of tunable whistles of various makers, but it wasn’t till lately I started playing the low’s. The Chieftain was my first real low whistle.
On 2003-02-28 18:06, msheldon wrote:
I will add one more thing.If you are serious enough to be recording with a band, you really should have a tunable whistle, regardless of the maker.
Henke: Just a $.02 thought:
I play both a non-tunable and a tunable set of whistles with my band and have never had any troubles. Certainly it is possible that something has changed, somewhere, in the parameters of your Chieftan. Checking with the maker will rectify that situation. Among the Parkhursts my partner plays, there is my loaned non-tunable Chieftan Bb (also bought in Kerry), which is always spot-on in intonation. It is a fine instrument, in all respects.
Could it possibly be that your band has been recently tuning to an electronic tuner that somehow has been reset to a standard different than whatever the standard is, in Sweden? Here, in the US, it tends to be A440. Any electronic tuner I know can be set differently, by simply pressing a button. On some tuners, the operating system is unnecessarily complex, and it is simple to foul things up, quite easily…
Just a thought.
Best to you.
Byll