OK folks here is my latest ebay treasure: item # 2577781546
I have no idea who made it or if it is home made or what. I got it today and it is a real beauty. It is in the key of C and is very heavy, well in tune though I have not been able to loosen the tuning slide if that in fact is what it is. It is the finest sounding high C whistle I have ever played, no kidding. The design is nothing like anything I have ever seen. The airway is a seperate piece attached to the top of the fipple, the air requirements are similar to a Clark or Shaw but the tone is more refined, almost flute like with some nice harmonics and a bit of chiff. So any ideas as to who made it? I just can`t pass up things like this to save my soul and this is the reason. For the price of a sweetone or Gen I have one heck of a whistle. And how about those blade guards.
Man Tom, that was sold at an estate sale right from under my nose! Not that I was actually at the estate sale, but I’ve never seen anything other than piano accordions and brass like trumpets at the estate sales here in KC!
Cool-o, Tom! Those blade guard thingies look like they serve the same function as the ridges around the window on the lower Copeland whistles (“for strong, stable tone” according to his website). That rolled bottom end is also interesting. Seems to me we’ve seen something like that around here sometime recently, but I can’t remember what it was.
Anyway, I’m glad you’re liking the new whistle, and it looks like you got a pretty good deal on it too. I really should check eBay more often!
Yep it is a pretty cool whistle. Not any marking at all Zoob and I even used a magnifying glass. The rolled end isn`t a rolled end. It is a seperate ring. The workmanship is first rate. I get the feeling that this is a proffessionaly made instrument but I could be wrong.
Today would be a great day to just sit here and play the darn thing as there is a total white out blizzard ragging outside. But, somewhere out there are 25 draft horses waiting for their breakfast so I had better crank up the old 63 dodge and head out to find them. Not to mention Molly, who I can hear voicing her outrage at me for being late. Morgans are a very upady breed of horse.
An interesting and unique solution to the windway! Instead of a fipple plug, the mass underneath functions as a support block for it. I’ve never seen anything like it.
It says “vintage” but in the photos it doesn’t look old at all. Almost looks like somebody’s prototype in their first attempt at whistle-making.
Interesting.
maybe molly has some ideas about who made the whistle . . . sorry to hear about the white out . . . here in phoenix, the only white out is found at Office Depot.
Oh, but everything on ebay is either vintage or rare…
Remember eBay, that’s where one pair of idiots will bid the price of a Clarke original up to three times its retail value while there are other Clarke originals on the same index page that have no bids at all
That’s kind of what I thought. My first impression is “that’s what a machinest would make if he was trying to duplicate an Overton from a fuzzy picture.” Not that it’s bad. It looks like a labor of love that was modified a few times to get it exactly right (the “wings” look to be an afterthought, for example). I think the ebay ad said it was from an estate sale, kind of makes you wonder if maybe the world lost a whistle maker just as he’d perfected his prototype…
Well Im not all that serious about the stuff I buy on ebay. If something looks interesting Ill give it a shot. This whistle was a one bid afair. I got the tuning slide loose last night and it is almost as silky as my Lehart. In real life it is a good looking whistle and after playing it a few hours I am more than happy with it. It does have a Clark sound to it but much more powerful and interesting. The design is quite well thought out and who knows, I might have to mess around with some of the material I have put together for whistle making. I do realy love it though when people bad mouth ebay. I mean how many times can you run across a 140 year old 8 key wooden flute for 75 bucks that sounds and plays like a dream.
Don’t mind the sour grapes.
At the price you paid, you couldn’t lose. It’s also a true auction “find”, in the sense it’s more difficult to spot a true rarity among the cheapies fluff, then, say, cough out the big bucks on a big name instrument in the most popular tone.
Remember how many whistles you’ve seen dissed here, to discover later they were fine instruments when you got one? And vice-versa for the over-rated ones…
Not only did you get a good whistle, but one with a brilliant, original design.
The “ears” (this IS their name, inherited from the pipe organs) here don’t look at all like an afterthought to me:
They would alter considerably a whistle’s voicing (flattening it globally by a good quarter-tone), so you either plan them in advance or end messing up the whole tuning.
Here, they also seem to have been designed to help aligning the windway tube.
The simplicity of their one-piece open clamp design takes quite a bit of planning, for one who ever attempted working with metal. The similar three-side window wall on a Copeland, esp. when brazed askew like on one sample I’ve played, can look, if not really amateurish, at least less “integrated” in the design. However, what matters is it works with these whistles using a pressed-in part of a thin-walled main tube as the blade. Ears are a rule more than an exception with metal organ flutes…
In fact I hate this no-name whistle of yours. I had both the ears (well, a “beard”, too) and flattened-tube windway on my drawing board, to discover with your find someone built it earlier, and with a brillantly simple construction.
The more I look at the pictures of that thing, the more I suspect that someone took an old Melody Flute or simlar C fife and cut off the flute blowhole, then used a sleeve to add a fpple-type mouthpiece to it. I don’t think the sleeve portion is a tuning slide - rather a brazed-on connecto sleeve.
I really wish the maker/modifier would come forward and acknowledge it - it seems to be a rather ingenious adaptation.
Wow. Very interesting. This looks like it was made by the same maker as one shown to me by Goretti Anglim at Norman Dannatt’s house. Goretti knew it to be decades old, perhaps 75 years. Look:
Holy smokes Dale that is exactly it except for the tuning slide. As I said before I got the slide working last night. The mouth piece slides in and out of the sleev. The windway is attached the same way but much better looking. Remember in the fotos on ebay the mouth piece is upside down. It is now rightside up. Maybe someone else saw that whistle Dale and tried to improve it. I just don`t know. Maybe I should send it to you so you can tap into your vast whisteldum database and solve the mistory.
