Other makers may well do the same if you inquire with them.
I have a few Burkes that have the added thumbhole. The tuning and clarity of flatted 7th note is great on them. But I generally don’t use them like that. I cover the holes with tape. Half-holing or cross-fingering works well on the Burkes without the extra hole. YMMV.
I know that Roy McManus has made whistles with Cnat thumb holes.
Actually, if you have a cheapy whistle,why not try putting your own thumb hole.
Start with a hole of about 3mm halfway below & between the A and B holes and increase to tune.
If its not great,just tape it up.
Don’t Rec…rs often have a split hole with two small holes side by side. You can cover both easily with a finger or just one. Not recommending for whistles that you do that, but observing a fact.
Sure. That’s done on some whistles too. I assume the OP was looking for a thumb-hole for the C natural note. Double holes usually do not apply to that note on a chromatic whistle. It still gets cross-fingered or half-holed.
Trill, the photo is one I snatched from the Sweetheart website. It is a standard offering I believe. http://www.sweetheartflute.com/whistle10.html
It was the first photo I could locate with double holes. The shop foreman at Sweetheart, Joseph Mourneault, also makes whistles under his own name. He seems to be producing a couple of different hole patterns for chromatic whistles.
and there is this one too.
The use of the double holes goes go back in history. While common today on the lower two positions of the recorder with “baroque” fingering, as LI Whistler pointed out, those holes would have been larger single holes on flutes made in that era. The practice of using double holes was employed on some flutes and fifes in the 18th and 19th century, particularly in France AFAIK. So it is a potential solution/method for makers to keep in mind.
Yeah, i have a Humphrey D plus (D whistle with the extra hole). He did it impeccably of course, but it turns out I don’t like it and don’t use that tube… when he made mine, the head from the D+ would also fit on a C tube, so I bought the combo. I just use it as my regular C whistle though. Should probably sell the other tube to someone who would use it.