As you all know by now, I love brass whistles and as of now I have sold all of my whistle collect except for my cherished Chieftain Low Brass collection.
I wanted to see if anyone could verify/validate a claim which was told to me at my local music store. I was told that brass resonates the truest note than any other material used in instrument making today. In other words, key of A on brass is truer than key of A on lets say aluminum or even poly-made instruments.
I don’t know what “truer” means in this context. Do they mean that the fundamental can get closer to 440? That doesn’t seem likely. A little work with the tuning slide should be able to adjust any A to 440–or to any particular nearby frequency.
Or, do they mean that the note will have fewer or, at least, quieter overtones (which I think most of us here would call “purer”)? None of my brass whistles come close to my aluminum Burke for that.
What composition of brass are they talking about? There’s a pretty wide range of characteristics, depending on the proportion of copper to zinc. See http://www.key-to-metals.com/Article69.htm.
And what should the fine structure of the brass be like? Should it be extruded, spun, hammered, or cast? Should it be annealed?
I’m skeptical–at least as far as whistles are concerned.
This sounds like retail hype to me for all the reasons Darwen gives, I think the geometry of the Fipple, hole size/position, and tube diameter are vastly more important than the material.
John
I’m thinking that possibly they might be thinking in terms of personal or generalized experiences.
If you were to take the EXACT and I mean EXACT same dimensions and design (allowing of course for whatever minor hole displacement that might be necessary for given metal) and apply it to different metals… say line up aluminum, brass, copper, and nickel you’d get something like…
brighter, mellow, about the same but maybe a bit more solid, and probably about the brightest .. respectively.
Brass tends to have a mellow, resonent quality due to its structural qualities. Copper and Aluminum hang around there and the harder and less resonant a metal gets, the brighter it will sound.
BUT, there’s not really any difference as to how well you can tune a whistle in any given metal. With good craftsmanship and design, any metal can be turned into a good whistle with true tune and tone.
And believe it or not, when it comes right down to it… with a little ingenuity, designing and some time, you could come pretty darn close to reproducing the sound you want with any of the above metals vs. the other.
I also agree with Darwin’s many good points.
Take care,
John
In regards to tuning. I don’t believe anyone could seriously argue that any one metal will provide a more in tune instrument given the same dimensions. That’s just plain silly.
That being said, different metals will, without ANY doubt, give you different tonal qualities. This is a fact that has been known for centuries by instrument makers. I recently read a fascinating interview of the designer of a new Organ that is being installed at one of the Disney parks. It’s absolutely amazing. He goes into detail about the choice of metal and why*.
Then again, I like wood better! 
If brass resonates so well, why are flutes made out of silver and gold?
(Serious question, I know less than nothing about how things resonate)
I hate the smell of brass! It leaves my fingers smelling horrible. I also hate how it tarnishes. I guess I am on the polar opposite side of this from the original poster. I can overlook my hatred of brass if an instrument is phenomenal, but I don’t pick it up to play unless I need it for a recording or a gig (rare).
a recall there being a somewhat controversial paper a while back that purported to show that material had absolutely no effect on the characteristics of a flute..or something to that effect.
I do know that I can’t tell brass and nickel copelands high D’s apart in recordings. I haven’t had the opportunity do this particular “Pepsi Challenge” live, though I’d really be interested in the results.
I know my brass and nickel-plated brass Feadogs are also nearly identical. The minor differences can be chalked up to individual variation, or possibly because nickel-plating changes the dimensions of the whistle ever so slightly.
That said, wood whistles to me generally “sound like wood”. Plastic whistles tend to “sound like plastic” to me too (ie: susato, silkstone).. But I’m not positive if that’s a real phenomenon or psychosomatic, or just because I’ve come to learn to recognize the particular tones of those particular instruments.
O’Brian whistles has some interesting sound comparisons of various materials (copper, delrin, lucite and wood) used as fipple plugs on their sound clips page. They also have a graph showing the relative strength of the harmonics with each material.
I dont mean to sound like a cynical skeptical old fogey… but I will 
Air molecules are relatively light… Metal - whether its brass, copper, ali is fairly solid. So is hardwood. So is delrin, ABS, etc. So those air molecules are going to bounce pretty much the same off each.
I think - and maybe I’m wrong - that its MUCH more likely that the surface finish of the inside of the whistle is going to be to main deciding factor. And when I say deciding factor, I mean AFTER the thickness/depth of the toneholes and the shape and sharpness of the blade.
The whistles I’ve made, out of PVC, copper, aluminium, all sound different. Each one has had a tone and style based on the fipple position, windway and blade FAR more than the material.
And the number of times people have said about GOOD plastic whistles - “that didn’t sound plastic”
Paul
For what it’s worth, I’ve had several people say that my Serpent Polly sounds like it’s made of wood. It certainly sounds different (huskier/breathier/less pure) than my Dixons or Susato.
FWIW, I don’t think that Water Weasels sound particularly “plastic-like” either.
I agree with John S
Partly because he has the same first name and initials as me and partly because my copper whistles are very nice.
P.S. I dont like brass 
I’m not a maker, just a player - and far more on recorders than whistles (at least until recently). This subject comes up from time to time in recorder circles as well, with much the same range of responses.
But through all of that I agree with Paul (pizak). The voicing of the instrument and the finish in the bore far outweigh the metal or species of wood or plastic choice.
I certainly have recorders that demonstrate that a good design, executed well in plastic, sounds wonderful, and a poor design done in exotic woods can sound not so wonderful (and that either can sound better or worse depending on the player!). Yet my palisander rosewood Kung Superio alto sounds far better (to my ears and those who have to listen to me play) than the best plastic alto, as well it should, seeing as it cost twenty times as much. But that is a tribute to the craftsmen/women at Kung in Switzerland and the designer of the instrument much more than the chunk of wood they used to make my instrument or the choosing of it.
My WhOA is not yet advanced enough that I can speak from similar experience with whistles (I’m only up to three different materials of high Ds - ABS plastic, copper with a lucite plug and aluminum with a delrin plug - and fewer choices of other keys), but that day may come .
It is true that the variances are going to be minor at all the same dimensions, and I think that the inner bore finish has to be taken a bit further… I still think it has a lot to do with the rigidity and thickness of the material. The less resonant a material is, the ‘brighter’ or somewhat ‘muted’ (not quieter mind you) the tone will be naturally… then it’s up to the craftsman/woman to create the desired tone available from that material.
My personal experience has taught me this much with thin and thicker wall materials. BUT that’s just me.
Anyway. another $.02
If anyone wants to search for it, I think I said something like that about my Serpent Village Smithy, made from chrome-molybdnum steel.
FWIW, I don’t think that Water Weasels sound particularly “plastic-like” either.
Ditto for my new (!) Busman Delrin. It doesn’t sound exactly like the Busman bloodwood, but it sounds more like it than it does like either the Bleazey blackwood or the Sweetheart (?) blackwood.
I assume this means that a lot of the tone involves Paul’s approach to whistle building. At least part of the difference between the two Busman’s (Busmen? ) can probably be attributed to the difference in the texture of the bores. The Delrin is smoother, and sounds just a tad purer.
I do think that the resonant characteristics (or whatever the proper technical term is) of the material can have some effect on the timbre. I can feel the bloodwood vibrating in my fingers more than any other whistle, with the exception of my (also new) Hoover bamboo low A, which also has a reedy sound. I do suspect that this effect is probably pretty subtle, compared to bore texture and blade design.
I can imagine that the resonance of the material might have a bigger effect with larger instruments, like trumpets, trombones, and tubas, which are instruments that a music store probably has more experience with. Anybody have an aluminum Sousaphone? Seems like the savings in weight would more than compensate for the loss of “trueness”.
Conn makes (or used to make) Sousaphones where the last section is white fiberglass - maybe the last 4-6 feet of it (if it were straight) including, of course, the bell. Lighter and therfore rather easier to march with.
I do have a counterexample to “material really doesn’t matter” among my recorders. I have two Kung Superio sopranos - one in palisander rosewood toward the denser/harder end of that wood’s spectrum and one of plumwood. The plumwood has a noticeably sweeter sound especially in the second octave and reaching into the third that is also sort of “softer edged” and a bit quieter than the palisander one. Now these instruments are roughed out by NC machines and finished by hand, so it could be just individual differences in voicing, but they both otherwise respond pretty much the same throughout their full range, so maybe it is the less dense wood that makes the difference.
OTOH I have two Susato two-piece high D whistles (of the same bore diameter) and they are more individual (read, different from one another) in both how they respond going into the second octave and to some extent the actual timbre of the sound than the two Kung Superio sopranos.
The difference, BTW, goes with the head if I interchange them. That argues for differences in voicing - between molded plastic instruments from the same maker even…
(One I bought several months ago when I was in Lark in the Morning in downtown Seattle and the other is part of a D/C/Bb set I got rather more recently directly from Kelischeck - as WhOA began to take hold).
All of this is part of what feeds the disorder that leads to these things proliferating… or at least it is for me.