I'm new here What about Dixon pro high d?

Whistle
1

Hi. I’m new here, but have been watching for almost a year.

A while back, my son told me to buy a r******r as a joke. I took him up on it and started having fun with it. BUT somehow, I heard some music on the whistle, and tried the whistle and found it was much easier to play and much more expressive. Kind of like the diatonic harmonica playing blues is so much more fun and expressive than one of those chromatics.

One music store locally here in the Arkansas delta carries Clark Sweetones. I’ve found a few in one music store in Memphis. Mainly, I’ve bought whistles on the net, and have had good luck shopping on the net.

I bought a whole “passle” of cheap whistles, and didn’t find one that seemed to be exactly what I wanted. I even made 3 “low tech” whistles myself (one of them is actually playable!) I finally ordered a dixon pro high D with a polymer barrel and a brass tuning slide.

Some of the comments I’d seen in Chiff and Fipple seemed to say watch out- that Dixons weren’t tuned extremely well. But my other choice would have been a Susato. (I wanted a good whistle, but my wife was getting somewhat upset over my excessive whistle purchases! Wasn’t 8 enough?) One of the things that many of the comments on the Susato was that the extreme upper register wasn’t really good.

Maybe the intonation is off. I really cant’ tell. I usually play by myself, not with a group, so I may not hear what others are hearing. I did wonder if what many were talking about on the intonation was the simply fact that by nature a whistle has to be off just a little between the first and second octave?

The fact is, I am really pleased with the little Dixon pro d whistle. It isn’t real loud, but that is ok. The low D is a little weak sometimes, but ok. The second octave is great and sweet sounding. This is the only whistle I have that can play Carolan’s Farewell in G and get those high C naturals and it sounds good. (In addition, C natural in the first octave sounds weak on most of my whistles. Not so on the Dixon.)

Did I just get a good whistle? Has Dixon changed its design? Or is the intonation problem in the ear of the beholder?

I’d be interested in hearing what some others think.
By the way, I have a Whistlesmith low d. I’m not very good at playing it. And I have played no other whistles to compare it to. I’d be willing to share what I know about it if anyone is curious about it. I have seen a few questions about it, but no one has really said too much about it.

I hope my next post isn’t so long;

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Dixon Whistles are really pretty good. I encountered some intonation problems with my first dixon (a tunable aluminum) only with the C# being a bit flatter that it should be. I bored it out with a Dremmel tool maybe the width of a human hair all the way around and then chamfered the hole again with a file and it is perfect.

This past weekend I took delivery of a Dixon Trad in Eb that the “C#” is just fine on. I like it well enough to have ordered one in D as well. I did notice that the C# on the D (Dixon Trad) was a bit flatter than I like but not as bad as the Aluminum I first got. A little attention with a small rat-tail file and this won’t be an issue.

Dixons are decent. I am waiting to see if he puts the “loud” models into production that were reviewed here as a one-off special request item maybe 6 months ago or so.

Bottom line is that everone is looking for something a bit different in a whistle (or from whistle to whistle). That’s why 8 usually isn’t enough. If you found one you like then go with it. :slight_smile: :wink:

3

I just bought a Dixon aluminum body/ABS head tunable D at Dusty Strings in Seattle last Saturday. A quick check of the tuning (while I was actually trying to evaluate a different whistle) showed it to be pretty good across the range in both octaves. It is a nice whistle - I like it.

However, of my modest collection of high Ds the one whistle that is the most consistently in tune across the full range, without needing breath pressure adjustments, is my Sustato Kildare (tunable) D. It does not have the problem of the second octave being “off” relative to the first.

4

The Dixon whistle is nice, but I found intonation issues as well. On the whistle I tried (alluminum body high D), it was hard to keep the two octaves in tune with one another. I liked it though.

Maybe try a Susato Very Small Bore whistle. I’ve heard these are quieter than Small Bore Susatos and Susatos have good intonation in my experience.

-Casey

5

Well, I’m gettin all kinds of replys on this . . . so I guess if I like it, it’s all right. If I find someone else down here in the delta to play Celtic music, maybe the shortcomings of the whistle will show up. I’m also a guitarist, and I don’t find many guitarists in this area. It seems my neighbors would rather listen to music than play it.

Any intonation problems don’t seem noticeable when I am playing solo. In the meantime, my Dixon seems pretty nice. It is much easier to play in the second octive than any of my other whistles.

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No… 8 is not enough.

Tell your wife every time you buy a whistle its a way of telling her you love her.

Sure it makes no sense but sometimes they fall for stuff like that.

Its worth a try anyway.

:wink: :smiley:

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Hi Cloyd,
A little bit of a thread hijack here… I hope you’ll check out http://www.arcelts.com to find out about our sessions and other events in the central Arkansas area. I don’t know how far away you are (you mentioned you were in the delta), but if you can make it sometime you would be most welcome!

Jennifer

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How about a brass Feadog? I love that whistle. (although I did a bit of minor tweaking to it)

9

For all intensive purposes you would be hard pressed to find a better whistle the the Freeman Tweaked Mellow Dog. These are truly great whistles. There are other whistles that are very good, ie. Sindt, Humphrey but the mellow Dog can stand up to them. I gave my Dixon away it wasn’t getting the play time and my best friend’s wife wanted a whistle. Get a Mellow Dog.

10

The problem people have with a Susato is that they can seem pretty shrill on the upper end. This is a problem with the player, and not the whistle.

Susato whistles take some degree of breath control to make sound truly wonderful, but even until then, it’s a great deal for the price.

I have a Dixon Trad and I’ll agree that the C# seems a bit flat. I usually just adjust it with my breathing and can get it in tune, but it’s not flat enough that anybody would really notice if you didn’t do anything to it. Like the Susato, it’s a great deal for the price.

11

Well, I just posted a long reply, and something happened, and I lost it.

Thanks for the information about Arkansas Celtic music society and the website. I am over by the river, in Hughes. We go to little rock on weekend outings often.

Reading what others say about Feadogs and Mellow Dogs, I have a Mellow D and a Little Black whistle. Like them both. Have the Feadog. Didn’t like it much at first, but liking it more. It is a more demanding whistle. I like the tone, but not its “chirpyness”. Learning to play it may make me a better player all around.

By the way, I’ve tried to get the mouthpeice off the Feadog, but it is stubborn. I’ve tried the boiling water trick, even freezing the tube thinking it would contract, but can’t get it off. I’d like to fill the cavity in the mouthpeice like I did on the Mellow D. It helped the Mellow D and a Meg I have. (The Meg is really good, but it is a shame it is going to rust away!)

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Well, I just posted a long reply, and something happened, and I lost it.

Thanks for the information about Arkansas Celtic music society and the website. I am over by the river, in Hughes. We go to little rock on weekend outings often.

Reading what others say about Feadogs and Mellow Dogs, I have a Mellow D and a Little Black whistle. Like them both. Have the Feadog. Didn’t like it much at first, but liking it more. It is a more demanding whistle. I like the tone, but not its “chirpyness”. Learning to play it may make me a better player all around.

By the way, I’ve tried to get the mouthpeice off the Feadog, but it is stubborn. I’ve tried the boiling water trick, even freezing the tube thinking it would contract, but can’t get it off. I’d like to fill the cavity in the mouthpeice like I did on the Mellow D. It helped the Mellow D and a Meg I have. (The Meg is really good, but it is a shame it is going to rust away!)

13

Yup. Exactly. Generations are like this as well in my experience, and I too love the Generations.

You can, I’ve met some pretty stubborn mouthpieces, but they all came off. Sometimes you just have to let it sit in the heated water longer then others. I don’t know if makes any difference, but when I dip mine into the water, I spin it around, shake it (gently, the agua is hott) and let it sit for a few seconds, then rinse and repeat. Probably doesn’t make any difference then just letting the fipple sit in the water… The temperature of the water I use, is just about boiling, but not quite there. You can start to see a bubble here, and a bubble there coming up from the bottom of the pan, and just a trace of steam coming off the top. That’s when I put the stove on Simmer, and do my thing with the whistles. So far I’ve never once warped the plastic on a fipple, and so far it’s worked each and everytime when wanting to get the fipple off!

That turned into a lenghty reply… :smiley:

-Eric

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Do you mean the cheap high D Feadog? I got one of those (I’m new to al this) along with a sweetone and a Walton high D - now I mostly play the Feadog - I love it - sounds good and it’s easy to play.

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None other! :slight_smile: Although mine’s brass one with the Green fipple head. I have a “nickel” one with the black fipple head and I like it too, but the thing is… I think it’s just nickel plated… cause if you look down the inside of the bore, you’ll see green/gold brass. At least in mine you can, I’d imagine the other’s as well.

-Eric

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I like my Dixon. I have the ABS with brass tuning slide model. It’s really clear, easy to blow, and fun-sounding. I play it a lot when it’s just me and the breeze.

That said, the second octave is sharp compared with the first octave. Not so much that the average person will notice when played solo, but I simply cannot play it with other musicians. We get to the second octave, and that awful slightly-out-of-tune warbling thing happens.

The older-model Dixons (all ABS) that I’ve tried have suffered from this feature also. I don’t know if the newer aluminum-bodied models do. I haven’t given them a try yet.

For what it’s worth, someone wrote to me at my website last week or so and mentioned that they’d read my Dixon review (where I mention the tuning issue I had), and agreed that the same was their experience. Their solution: put on the Dixon fife head, and use embouchure tweaks to bring it into tune. I suppose that would work if you had the 20 years fife experience this guy said he had! Me..i can only switch to a better intoned whistle.

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I’m very interested in learning to do minor tweaks. I have a Walton I’d like to practice on. What did you do to the Feadog?

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I’d be curious to know if the newer two piece dixon models still have that sharp upper octave or if it’s something he has fixed over time. My Dixon trad doesn’t - as verified by my sharp eared accordion playing buddy at session this past Saturday…best $25 I’ve ever spent on a whistle.

Eric