Ok, so I’m a shameless consumer of high-end whistles, who really didn’t quite get all this tweaking of ten dollar whistles. When I played through about 30 of my cheapies recently, I found some that were wonderful (waltons, clarkes and one feadog) as to tone and playability. My lovely to look at Shaw D had a lovely tin whistley sound to it as well, especially in the bottom end; problem was, I couldn’t play it very much due to outrageous air requirements. I just received my tweaked Shaw from Jerry and the immediate feedback is that I was able to play it long enough to give feedback. It now has normal comfortable air requirements, yet retains its traditional warm wonderful low end. The high end is very nice, but does require some breath control to hold the upper octave; very easily accomplished and much like with many other whistles.
This experience will not deter me from collecting and playing high-enders, and certainly no amount of tweaking will put these whistles quite on a par with most of the high-end customs, esp. with respect to richness of tone. However, if you want to get the most out of these whistles, render them utterly and easily playable and don’t wish to unnecessarily spend gobs of money, look no further. Jerry offers a viable solution.
I am definitely a freak, enamored as I am of whistles. Although, after viewing Jessie’s collection again recently, I guess it’s all relative…
Regards,
PhilO
