In isolation this could be taken for a Burke
But a glance at the seller’s other items shows all Chinese-made instruments.
I wonder if Mr. Burke is aware of this. Clearly a blatant copy of his design.
As for the seller’s identity, the ‘About’ page reads: We sell traditional handmade strings, wind, and percussion instruments from China.
I can’t be alone in thinking that using a moniker like ‘American Music and Arts LLC’ for merchandise coming from China (or anywhere outside the US) is at best misleading, if not unethical. Seems somewhat similar to the ‘Irish’ or ‘Scottish’ instruments and related products coming out of Pakistan.
Also reminds me of Chinese luthiers and workshops who put European names (usually Italian or German) on the labels of violins, violas, and cellos to make them seem more legitimate or market-friendly.
Under “similar items” on that ebay seller’s listing you’ll see what appear to be exact copies of Susato whistles as well.
Being copied is an occupational hazard among instrument makers (as well as other creators). I’ve had makers blatantly rip off designs that I’ve made in the past, and I usually take it as a compliment. I’ve riffed on the work of other makers, but in such cases I take the trouble to give attribution for the idea and I try to put my own spin on it so it’s not exactly the same.
It is cumbersome and expensive to seek a patent on a design, especially from a solo artisan who is not operating an instrument factory of any kind. And I don’t know how patents are enforced internationally, but I expect it is complex and costly to attempt it. Not worth it for most artisans. For many years I’ve heard about how Chinese manufacturers “steal” designs, and it seems to be true. Of course, historically China has been the first to create so many things that have been taken up by other cultures that it’s hard to be too indignant 
. I have been experimenting with a type of tuning slide design that I first saw on a Chinese maker’s flutes. I don’t know if their design was original (probably not), but it was the first time that I had come across it. So I can’t be too ruffled when it happens to me.
But the misleading advertising (creating a front to make it look like the instruments are made in the U.S. and such) is pretty weasel-y.
I’d say that copying and being copied is not so much an occupational hazard as the very essence of flute and whistle making, practically speaking.
If you study the history and evolution of flutes and whistles, as I like to do, you quickly realize that people have been copying each other’s designs for thousands of years. Each innovation leads to a proliferation of many instruments that incorporate it. Sometimes makers attach their own makers mark, or make some superficial aesthetic tweak to distinguish their work, but the fundamental design (i.e., the details that make the functional difference) gets copied, blatantly.
Some makers try to make the distinction clear, between their own copy and the original, with marks or aesthetic details, but it begs the question of whether it is any more ethical to make something superficially different that functions the same (i.e., obfuscate the fact that it is a copy), or to be honest about it being a copy. 
What I worry about is that the copy might not be a good one. More specifically, it might be a good copy of the superficial details, but a poor copy of the functional details that matter to me. That, I think, is where honoring the maker’s mark comes in. For makers with a reputation for consistently high quality, the maker’s mark really adds value, and that value has been earned. Copying the makers mark would be unethical, in my opinion. But copying the design itself? That just seems to be par for the course in this field, and it is in no way limited to makers in China or Pakistan.
At least in this case it doesn’t actually say that it is a Burke whistle. For those who simply assume it is the same thing because it looks the same, I’d say buyers beware!
Paddler brings up so many interesting topics!
The flip side is makers who claim that they haven’t based their instruments on any previously existing instruments.
I play Highland pipes. I’ve bought and sold many sets ranging from the mid-19th century to recently made. I take careful measurements of every pipe that goes through my hands. They all follow the same design very closely. The old makers found what works and though many makers have experimented with this or that they all come back to the traditional great-working specs.
Every now and then a new maker will announce themselves with the claim of “having done extensive R&D” and developed “an entirely new design” (as if they started in a vacuum, with a clean slate) but an examination of their instruments shows that they’re well within the quite limited range of deviation that’s always been seen.
When Killarney started out making whistles they were IIRC unmarked, which made them pretty difficult to tell apart from the Sindts they were copying from a distance. The main tell is the pins that stick out on a Killarney but are flush on a Sindt. I’ve noticed the Susato clones often have branding that looks very similar to the Susato branding, so again it might not be obvious from a distance (at least visually speaking) which you’re using.
Of course, Killarney has gotten a reputation on its own and now has a brand marking on there, which is probably helpful given how saturated the market is with Sindt clones at this point. Funnily enough, they’ve graduated into being one of the makes that are brought up as an “upgrade” whistle, rather than a discount version of a more premium whistle. The Susato copies, on the other hand, are still just seen as cheap alternatives and don’t have a great reputation.
All of which to say, if someone can make a clone of a Burke whistle that plays like a Burke whistle but costs 1/3 the price, there will be a market. To be honest, I’d be interested for some of the keys that come in handy every so often but don’t really merit splashing out 300+ on a new Burke. John Sindt still gets business despite the copies out there, and I’d imagine Michael Burke still would as well. But I won’t hold my breath that these are anything more than visual copies, as even the Killarneys which are very good whistles and near carbon-copies don’t quite play the same as a Sindt.
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Yes to both paddler’s and pancelticpiper’s observations.
All of the designs that were copied from me were strictly aesthetic and not functional. Basically, I came up with some variation in appearance that was seemingly original (I couldn’t find anyone else doing that precise thing) and used it to distinguish my own flutes from the crowd. In short, they were just variations in visual style. As paddler points out, the flutes themselves–their functional designs–were not original. They couldn’t be, given that every flute that I make is based upon a traditional type of instrument that has existed for ages. When I started making flutes, I could only make a beginning by copying existing instruments, and the only way that I could make the design my own was to either give them a certain look, or make a minor design variation to give it some slightly tweaked performance characteristics. When I first noticed other maker’s copying my work, I resented it, thinking of the work I had put into coming up with my own look/style. But some reflection made me realize that I was already doing the same thing, and that if someone was copying an idea I had then I should be flattered rather than annoyed.
At one point a few years ago I came up with an idea for removable tenons for Boehm head joints. I couldn’t find anyone doing this exact thing, and I briefly toyed with the notion of trying to get some type of patent for it. At that time paddler shared some of his insight into the patent process that made me realize that it was a cumbersome (and likely fruitless) pursuit that wasn’t appropriate for something like this, and shortly thereafter I discovered that my belief that this was an original concept was proven wrong. I was not the first maker to ponder on this problem 
.
I occasionally make flutes that I describe as being “new creations”, but that’s just a bit of marketing. It really just means that I made a variation on some already existing type of flute and presented it to a population of musicians who might not otherwise have encountered it. The Selkie is a good example of this. It’s a modified xiao (copied from the Chinese, of course) that has been tweaked to make it attractive to ITM players, who may have never tried anything like it. But it’s far from being a new invention. The six-hole xiao has been around for a long, long time! I’m confident that in the last couple of millennia that xiao have been made, lots of makers have already made these same variations at some point.
Even if a maker tries something that they believe has never been attempted, it is likely that this just means that they can’t find another current maker who is offering something similar! I can’t count how many times I’ve come up with something “new”, only to find that I had reinvented the wheel (as in above example of the removable tenons).
There is a Taiwanese xiao maker named Winson Liao, who is a dedicated researcher and innovator in the craft of xiao-making. He has developed variations on the xiao that are greatly sought after by serious professionals in Taiwan and China, and his work is widely copied. He is fine with this, and actually encourages it. His philosophy is that this type of sharing advances the craft and makes for better instruments. But he has also run into what paddler has spoken of above, in that there are makers who are not just riffing on his design variations, but they are actually copying his maker’s mark! In those cases they are also painstakingly copying his style/look in order to make it impossible to visually distinguish their forgeries from his work. He is not at all happy about that! I have this from one of his students who just visited me after having been in Taiwan with Winson for some flute lessons. This is just plain fraud. It’s along the same lines as that vendor operating out of Cypress who put up a website where they were selling junk flutes that were allegedly made by me (and not just me–also Casey Burns, Stefan Gabriel and maybe others). In that case, they were using images of my flutes (lifted from the Irish Flute Store website) to sell these junk flutes that looked nothing like my work. But even if they made perfect copies that were functionally equal and looked the same, it’s still criminal.
I’ve been contacted many times over the years by fledgling flute makers who want to make a start, and they often ask me what approach to take, what resources to seek out, etc.. Apart from telling them to search YouTube for videos, I suggest that they invest in a really good quality flute of the type they want to make and then copy it. Ideally they will want to find some way of making it their own, but any fantasy of inventing something new would be absurd.
They seem to have posted a D as well:
Funnily enough it’s got the look of brass, but the posting says it’s an “aluminum alloy,” so either the listing is wrong or they’ve tinted the alloy to pretend to be brass, which would be a bit funny. I must admit, I’m curious as to how it plays, but I’m not sure I’m $82 interested…
I don’t know if you’ve read the interview with/article about Geoff Wooff, the great Uilllean Pipe maker, where says that early on he acquired a superb early set of pipes by a renowned maker (early 19th century as I recall) which has served as a touchstone that he’s returned to time and again over his decades of making. I found it utterly fascinating.
That’s the thing with copies. The seller’s only interested in what they look like, because that’s what sells them. It doesn’t matter how well they perform; they’ve made their money by the time the buyer’s found that out.
If products are sold through platforms with return/refund policies they need to function to some degree, but they don’t have to be good and they don’t have to last.
If it followed the classic rules of fakes, a counterfeit Burke would probably produce a D scale but sound really poor compared to the real thing. There’d be at least one tuning irregularity, and one of the small components holding the head together would start to rust after three weeks — or fail because it should be metal but is actually plastic. 
I have not seen that, but it makes complete sense. Paddler had been encouraging me to attempt to create reference flutes for all the various types of flutes that I play, being a much more reliable way to maintain consistency than simply using blueprints, regardless of how precise they are. It’s time consuming to create and refine such a reference flute for each style and tuning (especially if you make a lot of different flutes), but ultimately worthwhile. I’m maybe half way there…
Someone on Reddit seems to have bought one and came away less than impressed:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tinwhistle/comments/1m9lh1m/ebay_burke/
I recently purchased a whistle that looked like a Burke with no makers mark and at less than 1/3 the cost of a new one. I know, sketchy. But I was curious and there is a money back guarantee return policy so I’m only losing the cost of shipping to sate my curiosity.
Well, wouldn’t you know? The edge of the mouthpiece was so sharp my lip was sore after only a little playing. There were red stains inside the tube that I’m assuming are from the cutting fluid used in production.
The tone was a bit muffled compared to my Lir in the same key and noticeably quieter. However, the tuning was excellent, better than my Lir actually, but because of the aforementioned, I will be returning it. I had doubts that anyone would bother to make a knock-off whistle, being such a niche market, but this may be one such. I’ve never played a Burke though so I’m only able to compare it to other whistles. If it is a copy cat, I think they could do well if they had better fit and finish.
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I hope it was cutting fluid and not the result of someone shredding their lip playing it!
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There was a recent post of someone playing the golden D on FB. I can’t remember which of the Whistle pages it was on off hand. But I believe there are only 3 so it might not be hard to find. It sounded pretty good.
The whistle in the photos looks like what a Burke might look like before it’s finished. The tube looks to be a thinner wall. The finish looks unfinished with lathe scrape circles on it. With a sticker price of $78 US for a new one, that regardless of response and tone required some work to shape and assemble, I’d pass. You’d think you’re getting “almost a Burke!”, and end up with a very frustrating experience. A “made fast in an obscure jungle with slave labor using only the finest stamping machines and no hint of quality control”.
It wasn’t my blood. After talking to the seller online we concluded it was the glue they were using to attach a plastic sleeve inside the tuning bore. I gave them some feedback, they offered to let me keep it for the majority of my money back, but I returned it for a full refund because I didn’t really need another Bb and didn’t want to spend time making it playable.
“made fast in an obscure jungle with slave labor using only the finest stamping machines and no hint of quality control”
Ooops, sorry, I didn’t know it was made in the US.
Apparently the company making these whistles (or perhaps a different company doing the same thing) has added a logo to their whistles, and they’re now claiming they have a “design patent” on their Ebay listings. 
Tunable tin whistle in D/bB key, aluminum alloy, Design patent | eBay
Not sure what value a design patent would have for a whistle manufacturer. But at any rate, it’s hilarious that they’d claim this when the design of the Burke is so obviously the only thing they copied about it.
I wonder if there’s a way to complain to Ebay and get this delisted? Because they’re clearly lying about the design patent.
TBH copying is the name of the game and has been for a long, long time. Before this there were various Susato clones on Amazon and eBay, before that Killarney was making Sindt copies, before that various manufacturers “independently” came up with the same style of injection-moulded head and conical metal body, etc. Burke might possibly have a case if they really wanted to prosecute it, but note that the “design patent” is registered in China, not the US, and I doubt Burke has a cadre of Chinese lawyers on retainer. The truth is that this is pretty common, and they aren’t the first or the last to have their instruments used as “inspiration” for another manufacturer.
The good news for Burke is that these don’t seem to be particularly good, so anyone thinking they can buy one and get a Burke will be disappointed.
I did find this funny
The tin Whistle is an instrument with over 80 years of history.
Technically true, albeit an odd cutoff date to use.
Ha! It reminds me of the early 1800s flute makers. Potter came up with a flute with keys, a tuning slide, foot register, etc, and patented it, prominently adding the “Patent” mark to the flute itself. Then virtually every other flute maker of the time copied it, including the “Patent” marks.
I’m not sure Potter gained any protection from his patent. But I also don’t believe he invented any of the features of his new Patent flute. So, I guess this kind of thing is still par for the course in wind instrument marketing tactics.