Been playing my new/old Copeland low D quite a bit and trying to get used to piper’s grip. I found that if I assemble the whistle with the barrel twisted a few degrees towards my lower (right) hand, it is MUCH easier to play. I can play the top three holes comfortably with my fingers slightly curved to reach the holes, and the piper’s grip now works a lot easier on the lower holes.
Does anyone know if Copeland can retrofit the three piece option onto existing whistles? Where is the split? If it’s between holes #3 and 4, this would make for REALLY easy fingering.
i also use this with my high D’s and low G.
EDIT: i don’t twist my whistles, i just point them slightly to the right
Except I use piper’s grip on both hands, you just described the way I use my Alba and Yvon Le Coant Low D’s: both are three-pieces split in-between both hands ooo/ooo.
So is the Copeland, as I gather from pictures.
For the retrofit I asked several times JR by email, never had an answer, no more than to the question whether a low Eb would ever be done. 
I guess you’d better lift the phone call Jim Copeland himself… Now, my guess is he can’t do the retrofit: the brass sections overlap at the split, not in the way of the tuning slide, but like on a Clare two-piece pennywhistle.
PS: you were right to get the one you bought, and not mine. The virtual thing is in the limbs, with no update or news… My sense of humour gets heavily challenged here 
Paul, just a suggestion. Practice pipers grip with both hands. You’ll get it very quickly and it will be much easier for you in the long run.
That brings me to a question for you Paul. What fingering would you use for a tenor recorder? The stretch seems quite considerable for the right hand, especially with those double holes at the bottom which don’t look easy to negotiate. Not that I’d ever dream of playing one of course. 
Paul,
Hey man, you don’t need a retrofit, you’ve got a saw lying around there somwhere don’t you? 
Loren
Paul
You’re on to something here. I tried t with a tunable Dixon Low D and it SEEMS in the short term to be less fatiguing, especially to my left hand. I just turned the head slightly, which offset the body to the right.
I was less happy with my success on the non-tunable Overton, where it was necessary to twist the entire whistle - which in turn mad the fipple feel off.
Isn’t this the reason that many low D players, will play out of the side of their mouths a little, rather than straight forward?
Many? Like, they are some who don’t? 
Razz aside, I never thought of that. I thought it felt more comfortable just because so it’s easier to “steal” a quick breath from the other side.
Sheeesh! now that you point to this, I’ll feel self-concious again, checkin’ myself on whether it’s the grip or the breath… and here goes the painstakingly acquired comfort.
There’s an old practical joke using the same engine: just insistently ask a bearded guy whether he sleeps with his beard above or under the sheets… He’ll curse you all night 
Sure, too much Guiness…
Loren
This is rather strange-- I just pulled out my Yamaha tenor for comparison. The bore is quite a bit larger than on my Copeland and the overall length is greater too ( but much of that is due to the extra low C and C# tacked on below the D). Lining up the fingerholes of the recorder next to those of the whistle reveals that spacing of the top three holes are virtually identical, and the overall spacing of the right hand holes is actually nearly a half inch SHORTER on the whistle. The strange part is that I finger the recorder with a typical, curved finger recorder fingering and have absolutely no problem reaching the holes very comfortably, but I really am uncomfortable trying that on the whistle, which is why I’ve been using the piper’s grip. I can’t figure that out.
I’ve had a couple of hard-to-finger soprano D’s that have benefitted from twisting the barrel slightly to the right (as perceived by the player). I stumbled on this just a couple of weeks ago.
Ditto here with an Aulos Tenor and the low whistles…
Why?
- Aren’t the holes on your rXXXX–Tenor–offset, while aligned on the whistle?
- Compare the size of them holes… Here, the “tiny” 3rd whistle hole is about as big as the regular holes on the rXXXXX, oops, Tenor thing.
Paul,
I do the same thing with all my whistles, whether they’re soprano, alto or tenor jobs. Looking down the barrel while playing, the tone holes point at about eleven o’clock (I’m a lefty). I do the same thing on the flute and ultimately this was the reason I sold all my non-tunable whistles. The Overtons I had, as good as they were, were bloody uncomfortable to play.
I found that if I play the low whistle slightly tilted to the right (not twisting the barrel, but the entire body), with the pipers grip, fingers tend to be flatter…which helps.
I’ve just done a few quick comparisons. This is very rough but should give those interested an idea. I’m ignoring hole spacing differences for particular fingers and also hole size.
My Adler tenor recorder and Copeland low D have exactly the same stretch but the Adler bore is a lot larger than the Copeland. The Copeland is slightly easier for stretch than my Reyburn low D and my Overton which are much the same although the Reyburn has offset holes. Since the Overton is cylindrical, it is a harder stretch to manage but not really hard with pipers’ grip. The Overton has a bigger bore than the Copeland but not so big as the Adler tenor.
Now throw in some D flutes. The conical flutes I looked at, a Boehm system and a Casey Burns keyless and an Alan Mount polymer, have the easiest stretch of all but slight differences between them. My Olwell cylindrical bamboo D is almost exactly the same as the Copeland for stretch and easily the hardest for me to manage of all these instruments. I have no trouble playing Boehm or conical simple system flutes with standard grip.
I could have looked at a few more instruments but I think the pattern is clear. Conical flutes are the easiest, cylindrical flutes the hardest. The Copeland is fine with pipers’ grip, harder than the tenor recorder with standard grip (for reasons taht are mysterious) but easier than the Overton which I could only play with pipers grip. The Reyburn actually is even harder for me to finger as I need to employ my pinky and use a modified pipers’ grip.