Well, Lark in the Morning have finally gotten onboard with the ubiquitous Sindt-style whistle, which seems to be essentially a copy of McNeela’s Wild whistle, branded with Lark’s logo. I asked about its origin on their FB page, to which someone from LITM commented: 'these whistles are made for us in Asia. We were sent some samples last year, thought they were generally great, asked for some changes, and received this first batch last month.’
They’re essentially around the same price as the Wild (maybe a bit less), but US customers might save on shipping from their shop in California.
At least LITM is more forthcoming than McNeela about where the whistles originate from, i.e., not in Ireland.
I had a Wild A for awhile, and though I liked its tone and responsiveness, it was just too heavy for me to play for long stretches of time, say over 30 minutes or so. I imagine the higher keys (D, Eb) aren’t so taxing on the hands, being that much lighter. I also didn’t care for the shiny brass on the headjoint that dulled almost immediately, and not in the rustic patina kind of way. But the Wild whistle is certainly popular with some players, no doubt in part by being endorsed by Brian Hughes.
McNeela is also the undisputed king of trad internet marketing. I can’t search anything at all on Google related to trad without seeing one of his ads, or his highly SEO-d site popping up in the results. He also gets well-known musicians to endorse his instruments; I presume they’re paid for it (I hope they are, otherwise I question their judgement!).
I’ve been by his little shop during the Willie Week and played through a variety of what he had there. Can’t say I was enticed to buy any of it at all. But he sure does know how to sell stuff on the internet.
More to the topic at hand, I wonder what production costs are on these whistles. I have long thought that someone could undercut the market, as the prices for the Wild and other similar whistles are €100+. Mullan seemed to be doing that for a bit, but I haven’t seen much from them recently. Maybe it costs more than I think to get a shipment of these in from the manufacturer, but I find the prices pretty high for a whistle that I think leaves a lot to be desired.
True, especially when the manufacturer is probably in Pakistan or otherwise not in the country McNeela (or Mullan, I’m fairly sure) implies they’re made in. That was actually a hindrance for me when I ordered the A whistle from McNeela, which I knowingly overlooked. If an instrument is coming from an Irish (or British, or wherever) company, I expect that’s the country where they’re made, and if not, then that information should clearly be made known. This current practice of having instruments made ‘overseas’ because it’s cheaper to do so, then putting a well-known name on it so it’s more marketable is more than a bit shady, IMO - even if ‘finished’ or tweaked by the company they’re sold by. FWIW, I have a nice wooden A whistle on order from Whorfin Woods (aka chas) that I’m looking forward to getting soon, and I know exactly where and by whom it’s made.
In the age of the internet things get blurry quickly! McNeela and Lark in the Morning are more obviously retailers who are sourcing an “own brand” product from elsewhere, and are at the very least somewhat forthright about it (LITM more so than McNeela). But nowadays there are a number of brands of Sindt-clone whistles, some of which seem pretty much identical to the Wild etc. whistles, but with websites that make it sound like they are makers rather than resellers.
There’s also a maker who has now switched to buying these OEM whistles rather than making them himself, and then tweaking/finishing them to what he wants. He’s honest about it, but again, it muddies the waters a bit between “maker” and “reseller.”
This goes a bit further maybe than the thread’s original intent, but I can sympathize with people far away from the usual trad hotspots who might find it hard to distinguish between these instruments through all the noise and marketing copy.
I certainly understand your sentiment, but the world changed quite a while ago. For the past few decades we’ve been living in a global economy in which almost everything, not just instruments, is manufactured somewhere else and marketed in such a way as to obscure the fact.
Trying to distinguish between makers and dealers is a little bit tricky in some cases, but I’d say that musical instrument buying remains one of the areas where you can often actually have a conversation with the person who made your instrument, and I find that quite refreshing. I don’t really care so much where something is made, but I enjoy doing business directly with the maker when I can.
What’s funny is that this whole manufacturer vs retailer issue isn’t that new. Many flutes were made by others and retailed with a US retailer’s name. Same with swords in the 19th century…and I am quite sure many other products.
This reminds me of mainstream instruments in the 80’s. Things like guitars, amps and drums fell into 2 categories: The good stuff was big company brand name or small shop 'boutique" stuff, all primarily made in the USA, the U.K., Europe, and to lesser but up and coming extent, Japan. Then you had a variety of crappy other stuff of multiple brands made primarily in one or two factories in a couple other asian countries, which were really complete crap by and large. However smaller retailers who couldn’t get a dealership of Fender, Gibson, Marshall, etc. felt they had to have some guitars and amps to sell, so they sold poor quality instruments by off brands made in these factories where the priority was to make “guitar shaped objects” rather than actual instruments that played in tune, and didn’t fall apart if you simply looked at them wrong.
As time went on, the off shore products improved, and today cheap acoustic and electric guitars from far off places are shockingly good, truly fantastic in many cases. But that took decades and a lot of people ended up wasting money on some truly crap instruments of dubious origin in the mean time.
The same progression seems to be unfolding with whistles and simple system flutes. Right now there seems to be some total junk, some meh, and perhaps one or two about average offerings from the mass production market overseas. Things might get better over time, but the customer has to demand better products, otherwise this is where things will stay. I don’t have a issue with retailers offering an imported, self branded product as long as it is good, problem is, some of these retailers don’t give a crap about the customer, so they don’t really care how the these whistles and flutes actually play, they just want a another product in store to peddle. Best to avoid buying from these places, IMO.
Also, if one wants the actual craftsmen to survive, you need to support them, otherwise I can assure you, they will dwindle.
I think we have a tendency to talk about imported products in terms of lower prices and poorer quality, but in many areas what has happened is that the quality has risen to the point where we can no longer compete, even on quality alone, never mind taking into account price. If you look into the manufacturing of everything from semiconductors to bicycles to electric vehicles, the best quality and the lowest prices comes from Asian countries, such as Taiwan, China, etc. We no longer have the know-how, infrastructure or investment to even remain in the competition. We market, but we no longer manufacture.
Pulling this back to whistles, I find it interesting that as a community we seem to have grown accustomed to prices born from mass production of low-end products, while still expecting finely crafted and carefully tuned and voiced instruments. This mismatch in expectations is currently unrealistic, but I don’t see a lot of consensus on where we would like to end up.
It seems to me that two possible end points, one in which whistles are a trivially inexpensive commodity item, and the other in which they are finely crafted, professional quality musical instruments, are very far apart. As are the costs and means of production. Realistically, if you want the instrument to be made by hand and fine-tune by a craftsman, the end cost will be orders of magnitude more than something mass produced in an automated factory. But the up front investment costs will be orders of magnitude higher to establish the mass production.
Is the scale of the market large enough to justify that investment? If nobody here thinks so, but people abroad think it is, would you rather buy an imported whistle or pay 100 times as much for a hand made instrument from a craftsman who lives down the street? Or maybe pay 10 times as much for the mass produced whistle with a local marketing label slapped on it?
This is the question you are effectively answering when you make your purchases. And, of course, everyone has their own constraints and preferences.
I think something needs to be said about the whole “mass production” stigma. Yes Lark in the Morning (LITM) brand whistles are mass produced, but not in the same manner as Generation Whistles are mass produced. LITM whistles are not your standard, low-budget mass-produced whistles with varying quality controls. Rather, they are high-quality “house brand” whistles sourced from reputable boutique makers in places like China or Taiwan. (Not everything made in Asia is cheap junk.) A maker in China will produce as good or as bad of a quality tin whistle that a company pays them to make. Having said that, a LITM whistle won’t be of the same quality as a Burke or Carbony whistle, but you’re also not paying $300.00 to $500.00 for it either. Another “mass produced” whistle is the Susato whistle. They are mass produced in one factory located in Pennsylvania. Again, mass produced doesn’t always mean poor quality. Anyway, I wouldn’t be afraid to purchase a LITM whistle or a Wild Irish whistle or a Susato whistle if that’s what I could afford. It would definitely beat a truly low quality, mass produced Generation.
A thought about the mass produced thing–I’ve just gotten into the hobby in the last couple months, and while I’m having a great time, part of my enjoyment so far is watching youtube reviews of all the whistles out there. Why people like one over the other, what they all sound like, etc. It’s somewhat fascinating. But the thing is, a LOT of the brands people were talking about as recently as two years ago are gone now. One guy died in 2025, several more closed for health reasons, one guy apparently just up and deleted his website. It’s been a little uncanny to have someone say “my favorite whistle is the X” only to find out they’re gone for good, so many times.
Now I’m finding little shops in, like, France or Poland who don’t have a page in English and don’t appear to ship overseas, and I guess Goldie, Burke, and Abell are still going strong. Which is great. But my feeling is there’s a big gap now in the ‘over $150’ whistle market. I watched a comparison video today from 2023 in which one of the whistles was a Burke and the other 5 are out of business.
Where I’m going with this, is if you can get a respectable ‘keeper’ whistle for $100-150 or so, and so many of the great craftsmen of the last few decades don’t seem to have passed their business on to acolytes, then does the $200+ market suddenly get a lot more expensive? Or maybe it gets some new faces? And does a glut of $100-$150 whistles have any effect on that at all?
Again, I’m a total newbie in this space, but that’s my impression.
In all fairness, unless you are privy to information the rest are not aware of, we don’t know how these whistles are produced. There may be an all automated factory churning out parts. Which is no problem ofcourse, Burkes are assembled from CNC machined parts as well.
In recent weeks I have played a few of these in Powell’s in Galway, mostly from the LIr/Wild and what have you bracket. They are serviceable whistles. I would’t run out to the shops and pay the money they’re looking for, but they have found a niche (although ‘niche’ is probably not the right word, seeing how the place is flooded with them).
I do note there was a a wave of people complaining about defective Lirs here at some point. I don’t know if that has been resolved but I wouldn’t go making assumptions about better quality control just yet.