I’ve made up a D whistle with both C nat and F nat thumbholes, but am finding the F nat hole to be a real pain. 
The C nat hole is fairly natural in its placement but the lower thumbhole is way down the tube from where the thumb would normally rest and is causing me a great deal of strain just to keep it covered, let alone to practise it in a scale.
Is anyone using a F nat thumbhole on a regular basis? I’d like to hear your experiences. 
The way I normally hold a high D whistle, my right thumb is approximately even with my first finger, or possibly just slightly higher. I think a F-natural thumbhole would be too low for me to easily control.
I would suggest a thumb key, but I think my thumb isn’t actually quite high enough on the tube to make that work either.
–James
I’m a big fan of half holing. Why knock yourself out with an F nat hole. Encourage your whistle players to learn to half hole and then they can easily play Eb, Bb, Cnat, Fnat, G# etc
There’s just no getting around having to make the F natural thumb hole lower on the tube than the regular F# hole, which does make it a bit awkward to cover.
The trick is to make it as small as possible, which facilitates easier coverage and also allows for the highest possible placement on the tube.
You’ll run into the same problem with a Bb thumb hole, but both are manageable with a little practice.
Half-holing is a wonderful and valuable technique.
There are times when half-holing just hits limits, though.
I still dream of a D whistle that I could play tunes in B-flat on.
–James
You could always play the recorder. (Ducking for cover! 
)
I wonder if anyone has ever made recorder-style double holes to facilitate half holing?
Tim, I do play the recorder. 
I can play Irish tunes on recorder…it’s not particularly hard…but the main problems for me with recorder for ITM is
–the F-sharp is too sharp if you use recorder fingering and way too flat if you use whistle fingering
–the timbre, the basic sound of the instrument, just doesn’t work as well for me in this music
As far as recorder-style doubled holes for half-holing, I don’t see why it couldn’t be done, but half-holing is really pretty easy anyway, so I’m not sure you’ll find much of a market for it.
Years ago, I also had a chance to spend some time with a hybrid critter that was part recorder and part whistle. This addressed the tuning issues but the problem with the basic sound not really working as well for this music still applies.
I think what I’d really love to have is a 6-key whistle. 
There might be makers who could make such a thing, but I doubt I could pay what they’d ask, especially for a one-off instrument. Oh well.
–James
Yes, but the onset / offset transient is different between covering a complete hole and half-holing. You can hear the difference fingering Eb/Ab on a C/F recorder with single or double holes. You get better note and pitch definition, and sometimes easier fingering.
I think the big fingering issue with trad recorder is not so much the F#, which you can adjust to, but the register break. Some C recorders you can fudge or tweak for an usable 2nd octave xxxxxx D, usually at the cost of the bell D.
Susato do make a narrow bore recorder that also more or less accepts whistle fingerings with a bit of breath gymnastics. Is that what you tried? It’s basically a Susato S body with recorder tonehole layout, and the sound is similar to their whistles. I think it’s marketed mostly to schools and the education market.
Susato do make a narrow bore recorder that also more or less accepts whistle fingerings with a bit of breath gymnastics. Is that what you tried? It’s basically a Susato S body with recorder tonehole layout, and the sound is similar to their whistles. I think it’s marketed mostly to schools and the education market.
No, I’ve not tried one of those.
What I played around with was an additional tube for a recorder that allowed it to use whistle fingerings…it made for a very loud, uncooperative whistle.
I think Walden has tried the Susato recorder?
–James
As I recall, Sweets used to do one years ago. I had one come through the store…I’m pretty sure it was a Sweet.
My take on it was that the keys made the whole thing kind of awkward and weren’t necessary as it also half-holed and cross-fingered just fine.
I’ve also had 10-hole fifes by Skip Healy which were quite cool. It made my brain hurt for a minute but then everything clicked and I didn’t have any trouble (*). I wonder if a finger hole for Fnat would work better than a thumb hole? Seems like that’s how Skip did it.
Doc
(*) YMMV. This is my experience with nearly every instrument I pick up…5 minutes from introduction I’m playing tunes by ear and sounding quite a lot better than I deserve. This is actually as much of a curse as a blessing as being “good” comes so easily that I balk at the price of being “great”. Thus, I’m “good” at a number of instruments and “great” at none.
Daniel? Oh ye of many keys, I’m sure you have a six key whistle under a pile on the back of your bench somewhere, no?
Like one of these:
German simple-system csakan, circa 1902.
Yes, I too recall one like that from the Sweets many years ago. They still list a one-key whistle, although they show it as out of production with the vague promise of making more some day.
I’ve seen photos of a Sweet three-key whistle; decent enough, but an odd beastie.
If I were going for a keyed whistle at all, I’d want a 6-key, or a 5-key at minimum (I could live without the long C key on a whistle if I had to). I’d want the keys in their historically correct positions as I am already familiar with playing keyed simple-system flutes.
With such a whistle, you could play music in any key.
–James
I also recall the three key model. Too bad they don’t offer these anymore. I remember the response of my whistle playing friends 20-ish years ago when I paid $75 for their keyless whistle. Everyone was surprised at such a high price. Of course, at that time the $5 Gens and Soodlums were in vogue in my area. The Sweets were very inovative in their time to offer keyed whistles, but the price tags were often prohibitive. But today it’s not unusual for a player to plunk down several hundred dollars for a good keyless instrument. Even if a six key was $1500 I’ll bet there’s any number of players here (including myself) who would snap them up. Maybe it’s time to petition the Sweets to reintroduce their keyed models?
Thanks for the replies and suggestions, it was as I suspected though, nobody plays one of those beasts on a regular basis. For the moment my client will go with one of those but in the future we may look at D minor with appropriate sharp holes to make up the range or perhaps a C with the extra holes. I suppose it will all come down to what practise reveals the ergometrics will bear.
cheers!