First. Happy St Patrick’s day to all.
Anyone with experience with Etnicwind Whistles.
Thanks
And to yourself.
I picked up one of his in A at the North Texas Irish Festival a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t spent much time with it yet, but I’ve attempted to put it through it’s paces. It’s a little on the quiet side, and a little closer to the “pure” than the “chiffy” end of the tone spectrum. At first I thought it had serious clogging problems, but I came to realize the the windway is closer to the edge of the mouthpiece than most…my lip was actually getting in the way. I’ve found that holding the whistle 10 or 20 degrees closer to horizontal fixes this… this may be long-term deal breaker for me, though. Perhaps more critically, I’ve found an abnormally large gap in the air requirement to hit the L1 note…high B if it were on a D whistle, but I suppose it’s an F# as this is an A whistle. I tried a number of his whistles, through the low G to standard D range, and they all seemed to have this unusual air requirement on that top note. On the other hand, all of his whistles were very pretty in the cosmetic sense…probably too bright and busy for many trad musicians and settings, but I really like the flash
Caveats: I’ve only been been playing the whistle with any degree of ambition for a year and a a half, and I’m more of a flute player anyway. Again, I’ve not put much time in with the whistle yet…my impressions are very much FIRST impressions.
i have the “micro” F,G,A set (copper) and not only do they look great, but play in tune and have a very unique, almost reedy sound to them (which i like). in fact, i would love to add more of the coppers to my collection for their really cool sound.
craftsmanship is very good, and Nick is friendly and easy to work with.
not as many used ones floating around, which can make them harder to try/get cheap, but it might also mean that people who have them, keep them.
oh yeah, the 3 i have (one head, 3 bodies, so like 1… kinda…) is an easy blower, not hard to get up to the 3rd octave, but i would imagine that is because they are tiny (above high D) and small bore.
Many of my whistles play this specific (the middle finger second from highest hole) note much easier if you cover the lowest hole. Let me know if that helps, if it’s still giving you any trouble I’m happy to have you send it to me for free repair, or exchange as needed.