I just found a store with these in stock. Very cheap - about $5 US. The have a plastic mouthpiece, but a conical tin body. Nice sound. I bought a couple (C and D is all they had) as well as a little nickel plated Generation Eb.
Now I can compare, that Clare whistle I wrote about before isn’t too sensitive, it’s just the original design Clarke that I bought first (square end with wooden fipple) does take a lot more air.
Damn, now I gott learn some control 
Oh WhOA is into you. 
Resistance is futile. That is about how I started. Several of the less expensive ones. Then I got my wife involved and she has VERY particular tastes. It is now quite expensive to get a whitle that SHE likes. I won’t tell you how much the whistles I get now cost, but it is more than 2 digits to the left of the decimal though.
Yes I can see how it happens. I might go another route as well. I would like to try making some myself. Depending on how successful I am, I might save some money., maybe :roll:
I also just got a few clark megs, because of the cheap price to try out. Overall, the quiality wasnt too great, but i got one that just sings with no tweaking at all. Pretty good i think for a three dollar whistle.
Megs are being sold here for $3.95 Canadian - which should be under $3US. I originally ordered from the US and ended up paying quite a bit more with the exchange rate, shipping etc. I get them for $3.25 CDN when I order in bulk. I have been buying them 50-100 at a time to take into schools to teach children (they can’t afford to pay more than that for a whistle as the money comes directly from them, not the school. They are not bad little whistles - especially when you consider that they make Irish Traditional Music playing accessible to all.
I don’t have any “high-end” whistles, but of the ones I have the Meg D is my favorite. I must have gotten a good one.
I bought two Megs, C and D, from the Whistle Shop, and they both have a wonderful sound for a three-dollar instrument. I find them to be exceptionally good in the lower octave if a little unstable on some of the upper. They’re very easy to play, but have noticeably different breath requirements than many other whistles (at least the ones I own). They are the only conical bore whistles I own, so I don’t know if this is true of all of them, but I find them very comfortable to hold. I suppose the mass production results in more than a few sub-par whistles, but the Meg is fairly easy to tweak as well.
Yes I tweaked mine a couple of nights ago. I put bluetack below the airway to start. A small difference in sound, but I like the weightiness it gives to the whistle.
Then I sandpapered the blade. I purposely ‘went to far’ to see the effect - at the price, a new whistle isn’t going to break me. Sure enough, I now have the low end stronger than the top end (it started the other way around). I had to remove more material than I expected after reading the warnings about not taking too much off - but then I expect each whistle will be different.
So is the Meg my next whistle?
I started with a generation, needed tweaking and I never really bonded with it…
Got a clarke original, and clarke sweetone at the same time. Liked the sound of the clarke original okay, but it does take alot of air, and I wasn’t fond of the shape of the fipple/mouthpiece.
I like the way the sweetone is easy to play, but doesn’t really have a very pretty sound, but it is fairly in tune and I like the conical shape because it’s easier to get my fingers around…but after playing it a while I wanted something that sounded prettier so I ordered a feadog and a susato tunable.
I like the susato fairly well at first, then my husband had to mention that it sounded like a recorder.
I do like the sound of the metal whistles so I’ve been playing the feadog for a while, nice sound, plays easy, but not so much in tune above the high g… and it squeaaks! I’d never heard a whistle squeak before, could be me, but after playing it a while it feels clogged or something and sqeaks.
So do I need a Meg? I was thinking about the nicer version of the clarke, can’t remember what it was, but it’s conical, but I was worried about the fipple/mouthpiece thing.. I also noticed somewhere there are tweaked clarke originals that have shaped fipple/mouthpiece things that look like they’d be better…
So what next, I seem to be trying new whistles two at a time… considering I’ve only been playing a few months, I think I’m in for a large collection…
Thanks in advance for any advice!
The Clarke Meg looks a lot like the sweetone, I was just wondering how different they really are?
It’s my understanding there are slight differences, but the Meg, is, and was intended to be, essentially a cheaper more mass-produced variant of the Sweetone.
I’ll add this, that of the manufacturers of inexpensive whistles, Clarke especially seems concerned with good customer relations, and providing the market with such an inexpensive whistle is an example of that commitment. I’d like to express my appreciation to Clarke for keeping the channels of communication open and for listening to what whistlers have to say.