For people who have owned both Goldie and MK low Ds, what would you say is the difference between the two?
I’ve borrowed a friend’s MK and I love it. Seems basically as good as a low whistle can get, as far as I can tell. I especially like how loud the bell note is.
Are Goldies as loud down there? Do they have more balanced volume, or better intonation? What qualities are better about them (if any)?
Goldies have a very different sound to the MK. It’s a different experience playing one, too.
With low whistles the difference between makers/models seems to be more exaggerated than with high whistles. If I had to, I could switch from my own high whistle to one I’d never played before – even mid-session – and make a reasonable fist of playing it. But I wouldn’t try it with a low whistle, I need more time to adapt.
Ultimately, the main thing for me was that the MK wasn’t playable and the Goldie was. Not because of any difference in manufacturing quality, but I couldn’t get through a set on the MK without it clogging so much I had to blow it out. I tried for months, but couldn’t get past a certain point.
I also found that for an asthmatic, the Goldie soft blower was easier to play than the MK. The MK needs a lot of air even in the lower octave (which seems to be a deliberate choice to even out the volume difference between octaves), whereas with the Goldie, my lungs get a bit of a rest when playing in the lower. It needs a fair volume of air pushing through it, but not at such high pressure.
So for me, it came down to practicalities. They’re both excellent whistles with a great (though different) sound, and if I’d been able to adapt well enough, I’d have kept them both.
When I was on my big Low D Whistle buying spree around 15 years ago I ended up with four different MK Low D’s.
All had tuning slides; they were all made prior to the slide-less “Kelpie” model being introduced.
All four of these had somewhat “fluffy” Bottom D’s, not the powerful honking Bottom D’s of the Burke and Susato.
If I tried to “push” the Bottom D on the MK’s the note would just break. The Burke’s Bottom D can withstand the strongest “push” of any Low D that I played, with the Susato not far behind.
All four MK’s had the same octave relationship, having the 2nd octave tuned slightly sharp. (When you play 40-odd Low D’s from different makers you get a sense of where “normal” or “average” is.)
As I’ve mentioned this achieved two things
evened out the volume differential between the octaves, because to keep the octaves in tune you had to blow the low octave quite strongly (nearly to the point of breaking) and blow the 2nd octave rather softly (nearly to the point of falling)
made the 2nd octave play very “light”, that is, only a subtle change in blowing was needed to switch octaves.
I only have one Goldie Low D, but I do have two headjoints, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time going back and forth between the “medium blowing” head and the “soft blowing” head.
Both are excellent, but clearly different.
What I found about the Goldie was that it was right down the middle of all the serious professional-level Low D’s that I tried.
It had the octaves tuned right in the wheelhouse where most makers are, and had that tricky compromise between the power of the bottom couple notes and the ease of High B just right.
As I’ve said all Low D’s are a bundle of compromises, and while various Low D’s would do this or that specific thing a bit better than the Goldie they would at the same time do something else far worse than the Goldie.
About tone (which I don’t get worked up about) the Goldie has that classic Low Whistle tone, for the very reason that they were the first Low Whistles to get into a lot of good player’s hands. Back in the day if you heard a Low D it was a Goldie, so the Goldie tone more or less defined the genre.
The MK’s I owned all had a very special tone which AFAIK is unique to MK’s. I could call it “dirty” or “gravelly” or “kaval-like”. Interestingly that special MK tone was most apparent on the note E in the 2nd octave.
The thing I didn’t like about the MK was the tuning issue between Bottom D and Middle D which all four of my MK’s equally had. Misha was obviously aware of it because my MK’s showed two different approaches to mitigate it, neither of which really worked.
A couple of my MK’s had a slightly shorter tube making Bottom D in tune but Middle D sharp.
And a couple had a slightly longer tube making Middle D in tune but Bottom D flat. Were the Bottom D as powerful as on the Burke or Susato I could have “pushed” Bottom D in tune, but as I’ve said Bottom D on these MK’s would just break up if pushed.
Thank you so much for sharing this! Wow, this is not what I expected to hear.
I owned a Susato low D once, and I didn’t find the bottom D very loud at all. It was definitely a lot quieter (I think) than my friend’s MK. But maybe that was just the specific whistle I got. I also found the Susato extremely difficult to play in tune, due to the sharpness of the second octave. I couldn’t play it flat enough to be in tune with the first octave.
Also, about MKs, everything I read online comparing their volume to other whistles says that they have the loudest bottom D of any low D whistle. For example: Loudest Low D Whistle on The Session. It sounds like this is not your experience at all. Maybe Misha has changed the design?
Maybe the takeaway here is that low D design varies a ton from whistle to whistle, even from the same maker. If so, that’s rather discouraging. I want a low D, but I guess I can’t really know what I’m going to get unless I buy one and try it out.
Yes I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Misha has changed the voicing on his Low D’s.
Many makers keep making adjustments as they go along, perhaps with feedback from players.
I will say that those four MK Low D’s I owned didn’t all play the same- each time I found one that had a stronger Bottom D I bought it (and sold my current one). I ended up with a slightly beat-up black MK which had been owned by Paddy Keenan and was clearly the best player of the lot. Even so the Bottom D was nothing to write home about and that Bottom D/Middle D tuning issue remained. It’s that very issue that Misha has probably addressed.
About Susato, they’ve changed their design several times. I’ve owned at least three Susato Low D’s (including one with an angled neck, which was a brilliant idea) but these were all made around 20 years ago and I have no idea what current Susatos are like.
These Susato Low D’s all played alike and all were very good players. IMHO Susatos get better as they get lower, and the Low D’s and especially the Low C that I had were competitive with some of the best alloy Low D’s. The Bottom D was exceptionally strong, nearly as booming as the Burke’s. (In the few years I played a Burke Low D as my primary instrument my style really changed, due to the honking Bottom D and Burkes being champion air-hogs I found myself playing in that old-school huffy-puffy Bottom D-honking frequent breath-taking style.)
Another interesting thing about the Susato Low D was that it maintained more of its character in the 2nd octave than most high-end alloy Low D’s. I recorded myself playing a half-dozen different Low D’s and I found that however rich the tone was in the low octave the tone usually gets somewhat bland in the 2nd octave.
Perhaps the way the Susato tone stays a bit “woody” in the high notes is due to the thicker walls. The MK and Reyburn also had nice characterful 2nd octaves.
And speaking of Reyburn, while most Low D’s have a fairly similar tone the Reyburns I tried (three or four) have a very special tone all to themselves, sort of NAF-like.
Now back years ago when I was acquiring, testing, and selling off a large number of Low D’s I made this video, which to me only demonstrates how useless YouTube videos are for assessing how Low D whistles play. In person these whistles sounded and played quite differently from each other.
pancelticpiper,
If I may, I’d like to ask 4 questions on the “medium” and “soft” blowing heads.
For a given note:
which took more “lung pressure” ?
did one allow longer passages between breaths ?
how did the volume/loudness compare ?
how did the voice/timbre compare ?
Thanks very much,
trill
ps: I once borrowed an Overton A. Lovely instrument. Velvet voice. Hated to give it back.
Excellent questions! These were exactly the sorts of things that fascinated me as I went back and forth.
I haven’t actually measured volume, but my impression is that volume, timbre, and tuning aren’t noticeably changed when I switch heads.
About the different Goldie heads, Colin used these terms in our discussion:
“Hard blower” .8mm windway height
“Medium blower” .87mm windway height
“Standard soft blower” .97mm windway height
“Very soft/easy blower” 1mm windway height
He used to go by the “Medium” “Soft” etc nomenclature, my understanding is that now he puts the actual windway height in mm inside the bell (where he signs and dates his whistles).
The “soft blowing” head, having a wider windway, has less resistance so air flows through the instrument faster, and it takes a larger volume of air to play.
This means that breaths have to be taken a bit more often (the difference isn’t all that big).
The main difference is that overall IMHO the “Soft blower” is a better player, more “musical” if that makes any sense.
The 2nd octave is lighter, easier, and transitions between the octaves are more nimble.
Surprisingly the low notes, particularly the bellnote, are “fatter”, stronger, and can be “pushed” more.
So the “Soft blower” does everything better, the only penalty being that a greater quantity of air is required, and I can’t play quite as long phrases on a single breath.
After playing the “Soft blower” for a few days going back to the “Medium blower” is a bit offputting, the thing requiring being blown a bit stronger and the high notes being a bit stiff. Yet, after playing the “Medium blower” for a while I get used to it, and do relish being able to sustain high notes for a longer time.
A year or more ago a UK shop received a small consignment of low Ds from Colin, and by sheer luck I visited their website before they’d all been snapped up. There was a soft blower advertised, but also a soft-medium. I can’t remember what the windway height of the latter was now, only that I found it hard to make my mind up. I really like the soft blower, but kind of wish I’d had the chance to try the soft-medium as well.
I don’t think there’ll be a vast difference, but it’s possible he’s found a good compromise between the soft and medium.
For sure, when going back and forth between the “medium” and “soft” I thought how great it would be to be able to try a Goldie right in the middle.
In truth, I don’t know the actual windway heights of the two heads I have. I tried to measure them with calipers but I don’t think I was getting valid measurements because they didn’t quite match up with Colin’s stated specs.
I got 1mm for the “soft” and .8mm for the “medium”, which if accurate would make my “medium” a “hard” and my “soft” a “very soft”.
But it can’t be, because my “medium” is stamped “M” on the outside of the tube.
I’ve never played a Goldie, so I can’t help you out there, but I do have an MK low D that I’ve actually been thinking about selling, since I almost never play it. I dug it out to test it, and here are my findings. FWIW, I purchased it brand-new in mid-2023, so it’s a pretty new model.
Tuning: Tuning it so that the low D was perfectly in tune, and blowing the way I normally would, the two D’s read virtually identical. I can blow the middle D slightly flatter than the bottom D, or slightly sharper, or right in tune. The upper octave seems to be dead on in tuning, and if it leans any one way, it’s actually ever so slightly flatter than the lower octave. My conclusion would be that Misha has really dialed in the tuning since Pancelticpiper last tried them.
As for balanced volume, here’s what I found. I played each note into a decibel meter, and here are the readings in decibels, with the lower octave number first and the upper octave second:
D: 80/87 = 92% as loud
E: 82/89 = 92% as loud
F: 84/95 = 88% as loud
G: 86/96 = 90% as loud
A: 89/101 = 88% as loud
B: 89/102 = 87% as loud
For reference, I’m playing each note in the lower octave as loudly as I can, and each note in the upper octave as quietly as I can. The final result is that the MK whistle’s lower octave plays at 90% the average volume of the upper octave. Just for comparison, I then repeated these same tests on my flute, again trying to be as loud in the first octave and as quiet in the second octave:
D: 79/79 = 100% as loud
E: 77/74 = 104% as loud
F: 79/79 = 100% as loud
G: 82/78 = 105% as loud
A: 85/83 = 102% as loud
B: 87/86 = 101% as loud
Final result: The flute’s lower octave can be played at 102% the volume of the upper octave. Now, obviously the flute is a different instrument from the low whistle, but I found it interesting just to give some context to the numbers.
Also, the high B on the whistle is 128% the volume of the low D. On the flute, it’s 109%.
I’m a little curious, Cyberknight, as to what you thought of the upper octave on your friend’s MK. From previous posts, I’m of the impression that you prefer a sweet upper octave. (Don’t we all?) But from my experience with my MK, I found the upper octave not exactly screechy, but definitely loud. It might be interesting to take a whistle whose balance between lower and upper octaves you like, and just measure the volume difference and see how it compares to the figure I got. I’m not too concerned with the volume levels themselves, since background noise, etc. will vary between people’s tests, but the percentage difference should be pretty telling.
This is very surprising. A low whistle that’s louder than a flute, whose second octave is less than twice as loud as its first? 
Assuming you measured that correctly, sounds like I need an MK.
Well, I’d be happy to repeat my tests tomorrow, to verify the accuracy, scientific-method style, but those were my initial findings. For a bit more info, the noise floor was somewhere around 40 db, so assuming the low note adds +40 db, then the high note is about 1 1/2 times as loud as the low note, and not approaching twice as loud.
I wouldn’t take the flute vs whistle volume too seriously. There was probably a difference in background noise, and I was probably further away from the microphone with the flute. I was more interested in seeing the ratios at the time. Tomorrow I’ll repeat the test and make sure I’m the same distance away each time. I’m guessing that the volumes will be a lot closer together then.
Thinking about it some more, it seems to me like the most important measurement will be the percentage difference between the low D and the high B. If we pick our favourite whistle, one with a good balance between the upper octave and low notes, we should be able to calculate our ideal percentage of volume difference. After all, in terms of perceived shrillness, volume is going to be the most significant factor. It seems that if we find a whistle that has a bottom note strong enough for our liking and with our ideal ratio, we will probably like that whistle. (Tone and playing characteristics notwithstanding.)
I just played through my collection, and I seem to have an ideal percentage with the high B being 119% to 125% the volume of the low D. I’d probably like a whistle with a slightly lower percentage as well, but I’d prefer nothing higher. Here is a detailed breakdown with all my whistles and my findings.
Dixon Trad high D: 125%. Acceptable, but a little shrill for my tastes.
Tweaked Generation Bb: 120%. Quite a pleasant player, though I’d prefer a stronger low D and I would accept a stronger high B as a natural result. The ratio is still acceptable.
Tweaked Generation D: 119%. My favourite whistle to play, it has an acceptably strong low D and a fairly sweet high B.
MK Pro low F: 125%. Similar to the Dixon, it’s acceptable, and it plays quite well, but I’d prefer a quieter high B.
Shearwater alto A: 126%. The highest on this list, it becomes pretty piercing on the upper A and B notes. Still fine for the passing note, but I wouldn’t like to sit there for long.
Of course, we already know the MK low D is 128%. With anything above 125% up to about this 128% limit, the high notes are fine in passing, but they aren’t what I call pleasant. If I’m going to be playing higher notes for some time, I prefer a ratio closer to 120%. But these are my findings. Perhaps some of you like higher percentages, or even lower percentages. From this, we should be able to calculate if we’d like a whistle based on the ratio and knowledge of the strength/sweetness of either the low D or the high B. But I’m curious to hear what your guys’ take is on this!
My recent interaction with Cyberknight reminded me of something important: We all have a different noise floor, so for these tests to be at all useful, the noise floor should be subtracted from the calculations. For example, taking my calculation earlier for the MK D, with the low D being 80 db and the high B being 102 db, and assuming the noise floor of 40 db, the final calculation should be (102-40) / (80/40), or 62/40, which equals 155%. With that in mind, I’d ignore my previous numbers. I’m going to redo the tests properly, removing the noise floor and averaging the findings over several testings. Hopefully I’ll post the findings sometime tomorrow.
The decibel scale is logarithmic. This suggests you should be using subtraction, as in 102 dB - 80 dB = 22 dB, to compare loudness, rather than ratios or percentages (102/80).
I look forward to seeing the results! 
I’ve never tested this sort of thing as scientifically as you seem to be doing.
pancelticpiper,
Thanks very much !
trill
That’s great to hear!
I need to get my hands on a newer MK.
There’s a silver one (plain alloy?) on Ebay now for a very good price, I think it’s new.
Misha didn’t use to do silver/plain alloy, though tons of people asked him. The closest you used to be able to get to a trad/plain MK was black.
If only he would do this with the Midgie. 
I’ve never played a Midgie, but I take it the tuning isn’t so great?
Tunborough makes a great point, I would never have thought of this, so thanks for steering me off of that track.
To sum up what this means, in case anyone else had as much trouble with this as I did, basically the decibel ratio will be the same, regardless of distance from the microphone or noise floor or anything like that. That means that we can very easily measure the difference in volume of any whistle just by reading the decibel difference between the high B note and the low D note. To be clear, it’s just the difference that’s important. To measure the volume of a whistle, we’d need to set a defined distance from the microphone. But as it is, we can start generating useful numbers without any other information. For example, I measured my MK D to have a difference of 23/24 dB between the two notes. Testing whistles whose voicing I’m a fan of, I can determine that for whistles I prefer a disparity closer to 19/20 dB. My perfect voicing, testing on my flute getting the exact volume I want, is about 13/14 dB.
So how does this apply to the thread? Well, if Cyberknight would like to test a whistle whose voicing he likes, we can get his ideal whistle voicing, and then compare that to the MK voicing vs the Goldie voicing, and even the soft Goldie head vs the medium head. So if other people would like to start submitting numbers, that would be great. I tried a few online decibel meters, and found them to be pretty inaccurate. If you have an actual decibel meter, great. If not, the CDC makes an app for IOS called NIOSH SLM. For Android, this one seems to be fine, though I don’t have hands-on experience with it. To use, just measure the decibel difference between the two notes, making sure you don’t change your distance from the microphone between the notes. Theoretically, you should be able to be quite far from the microphone, but more practically, you’ll probably start getting less accurate readings any more than 1m away.
As for the flute vs. MK for volume, testing them from more or less the same distance revealed the flute to be about 1 dB softer on the lowest two notes, and 1 dB louder on the upper hand notes. In the second octave, the flute can be quieter or louder than the MK. Playing them both the way I would normally play them, I’d say that the low octaves are virtually the same, and the upper octave is quieter on the flute. Could this be due to a weakish embouchure? Definitely. But I think it’s appropriate to say that the MK is a pretty loud whistle. I hope some of this can help you with your decision!