What is your favorite whistle and why? I have accumulated a number of inexpensive whistles, and I guess I lucked into one of the mythical ‘good’ Generations and also a nickel Clare that I’m fond of. The Clare has a great tone and is in good tune to itself. Love them both.
Depends on key and tune. If you’re only considering high D and ignore how much better some whistles are for certain tunes IMHO, then it’s a toss up between my Sindt brass head/silver body or the Schultz blackwood Thin Weasel.
ecohawk
Out of everything I’ve owned and/or played:
- A friend’s Lon Dubh
- Burke DAN. I wish I’d never sold it.
- Busman. My current main session whistle.
- Freeman Mellow Dog C. I love this C! People who get the Mellow Dog in D and pass on the D/C set are really missing out.
my everyday whistle.. Thornton high D, why? it suits the way I play
or to put it another way, I just get on with it.
Sindt C… Smoooooooooth
Goldie low D… just a good whistle.
Old chieftian A, new Hoover brass A, onyx low d, somers c, silkstone alloy D, Reviol G, dion wood B. not necessarily in this order. All exceptional.
Sindt sterling silver/brass D
Walton Golden Tone C
O’Riordan Traveler Bflat/A
O’Riordan Traveler G
Copeland G
Philo
I agree with Thomaston. I love my Mellow Dog C. I play this more than the Mellow Dog D. Lately, I play the Mellow Dog C more than any other whistle. For a D whistle, I prefer my Thornton D and Dixon Trad. Lately, I’ve revisited my Generation D and really like it.
Poppi
My Mellow Dog D & Goldie Big O Low D.
i love the SHAW,so loudly!Crispy clear!It is often undervalued
Rose, KPro.
The ones I’ve made and a Generation Bb, until I make one that’ll match/top it.
Feadog D, Generation D, and a couple Generation B whistles.
The first two are both better than just about any other whistle I’ve tried in D, but are also completely standard off-the-shelf whistles. The Generation I picked more or less at random out of a box of them, so I know I can get back-ups whenever I want. Both of the Ds are just very well balanced with a very nice whistley tone. The Bs are standard Bbs that I chopped a bit off the tube at the top and a littler bit off the bottom. Perfect B whistles.
Quoting Jerry Freeman’s ebay listing:
*There’s really no such thing as a key of C Mellow Dog. With a D tube, the Mellow Dog is a wide body whistle. With the C tube that comes with a Mellow Dog D/C set, it’s a standard body whistle, identical to a key of C Blackbird.
So my favorite is my Mellowdog. I like the C Blackbird, but not as much. I also really like my Carbony low-G. These are so different from one another that it’s not really possible to compare them.
Sindts in D, Bb, and A (latter two are new, my first A whistle); nice traditonal tone
Impempe D; smooth and creamy
Humphrey Trad C (also have a D+ body for it);powerful
An old Clarke original in C I found last summer in an antique store; lovely and smooth
I like my Freeman Generation set the best. I like the sound of my Feadog D but it is temperamental and my Clarkes always sound less in tune. I mentioned all of my whistles because any one of them can be my favorite when I pick it up. It’s just that it may not be so when I put it down.
Gary
I personally prefer the sound of a c whistle I have a freeman C, a very good whistle.
My Busman C arrived about two weeks ago and its not just a good whistle, its a great whistle.
It has rapidly become my favorite.
I’m not clear whether the question is asking which is our one favourite whistle (regardless of key) or asking which is our go-to whistle, that is, the whistle we use the most.
If I wasn’t going to be playing with anyone else, that is, my favourite whistle to play solo, it would be the Generation C which I bought around 1980. No whistle I’ve ever tried matches it in fullness and roundness of the low notes and exquisite sweetness of the high notes. And to boot it “sounds like a whistle”, that is, it’s not trying to sound like a recorder or a Boehm flute or a Native American flute or anything other than a Generation whistle, like so many neo-whistles seem to be trying to do.
Now obviously that’s not my “go-to” whistle because the key of C isn’t called for as often as the key of D. My favourite High D is the Feadog MK I that I bought also around 1980, my favourite Low D is the MK I recently aquired.
But if asked to play an unaccomanied whistle solo at some concert or whatever it would probably be that Generation C that I’d grab.
I actually had to do just that recently, but I wanted more of a Low Whistle sound, and I debated whether to use the MK D, my Burke Eb, or my Overton E. I ended up going with the Burke Eb because of it’s bigger “bottom D” and its relatively civilised “high B”.
The whistle I play the most is my Freeman Bluebird D, a close second is my Freeman tweaked Generation Bb.
I play mostly tunes in the key of D so it fits!
But sometimes I spend the whole practice time on the Bb due to the lower mellow sound which makes my dog happier!
I have a generation C that I love - (well its really halfway to a gen C# or is that Db) and it is not quite as good pulled out and the head cracked in doing so. It was the first randomly tried C form a box of whistles - tried all the others in the box, none were as nice - almost didn’t get it as the clerk dropped it while ringing up our purchases and disappeared to get a fresh replacement that hadn’t hit the floor! Haven’t played it much recently, have to look for it.
Right now my favorite is an A whistle I made. Still high enough to be a ‘whistle’ but has a bit more… oomph or something… fun to play… fingers are little less cramped than a D, but not stretched too much… Have to make another Bb - it was pretty special too but I sold it.
Interesting. I have a Generation C that I got in the mid 1990s. It’s OK, but I don’t like it nearly as well as my C Blackbird. The Generation that I have, by comparison, has a muddy top end.