As of 04-04-04, my PVC whistles and retrofit heads have been discontinued.
I now only make complete whistles with black Delrin heads and thin walled brass tubes.
Photos of my new whistles are now posted on my website.
http://webpages.charter.net/raindog1970/
Thanks to everyone who provided the feedback that prompted me to make the changes.
I was just about to post a review of one of Gary’s wide-bore D whistles, but he beat me to the punch with his commercial announcement. I hope it’s okay to just attach my review to his commercial post (let me know if it’s not and I’ll move it). I paid for the whistle so I’m not biased…this is just a personal review.
Looks: This is a very nice looking whistle. It is made from dark gray PVC, black Delrin, and one brass pin in the head. It has a very modern look to it. It is very well finished, fits together very tightly, and has no rough edges. All the parts are symmetrical and even.
Engineering(?): The windway is curved. The holes are fairly large (water weasel size or maybe even a bit bigger). It’s easy to half-hole F-natural and G#. The hole edges are smoothed out just a touch which is good for sliding into notes, but they’re still easy to seal. The tuning slide is a tight fit and won’t accidentally move out of place once you’ve got it where you want it.
Sound/Playability: Even though it is wide-bore it is not an overly loud whistle (not as loud as a Copeland or Overton). I don’t own a water weasel at the moment, but I’d say it’s around that volume level, or maybe a bit quieter…probably about the same as a Burke. It has a fairly pure sound with just a bit of air/chiff and a great 2nd octave (not shrill at all). The low octave is very nice too. It’s a very responsive whistle and has a nice “pop” to it when playing ornaments. It has low/medium air requirements…not bad at all.
The volume balance between octaves is good. I show a 5 dB difference between low/high notes up to low/high G (D E F G), the low/high A and B have about a 10 dB difference, and take a touch more air to hit. This is very subjective, but at a distance of 2 feet from my mic the dB level goes from 42 on the low D up to 62 for high B. The low D and E are a little weaker than the other lower octave notes at 42 dB (low F up to high F are right around 50-55 dB).
Tuning: The tuning is very good (according to my PC tuner) and C-natural is great fingered oxxooo. Other c-nat cross fingerings are a bit flat. I’ve always used oxxooo for c-nat, so this is good for me. There is almost no difference in tuning between middle D played 0xxxxx and xxxxxx, but the xxxxxx has fewer overtones (sounds purer).
I guess that’s all. If any of that was unclear or you have questions, feel free to ask.
-Brett
Nice looking work Gary, cool.
Loren