Low D brass whistle

Whistle
1

I’m looking for a Low D brass whistle without breaking the bank. My current instrument is a Tony Dixon aluminium model. I’m very fond of it, but I hanker after the feel and sound of brass. One of my favourite whistles was a brass Dixon low G which I managed to lose at a drunken session. They don’t make the brass model any more, and the replacement aluminium has a heavier tone.

I don’t want to shell out for a Burke. I’m not a good enough player to do justice to it.

Howards sound fine when others play them, but they have a heavy recorder feel when I’ve tried them. I had one but gave it away . They don’t respond to me.

I guess what I’m looking for is a good Generation style brass soprano D but in a low model. I’ve done a lot of googling but not found much. I’m surprised something like this isn’t easily obtainable. Or maybe it is and I’m just looking in the wrong places.

2

I don’t think you’ll find such a thing as a “Generation style” Low D whistle.

You can’t just make a Generation twice as big…well you couldn’t but it wouldn’t be playable.

Yes the Howard and the Kerry Optima both have metal tube bodies and plastic tops, but IMHO neither could be called a “Generation style” whistle.

Low D’s present quite different challenges to makers than High D’s and require different solutions.

Unlike with High D’s, with Low D’s you get what you pay for, unless you chance to find a used one being sold under current market value.

I would take a look at Ronaldo Reyburn Low Whistles. He used to make quite a few in brass. IIRC he stated that the difference between the same model head with brass or alluminium tubes was negligible, and did what all the other makers did, stick to aluminium.

I used to have a “Kerry Gold” Low D, made of solid brass. It was very heavy to hold and I had to get a Bari Sax strap to play it for any length of time. It lacked power in the low octave and had an exceptionally sweet 2nd octave but not having experience with the same model in aluminium I can’t say whether the brass had anything to do with it.

3

Jerry Freeman makes such a thing, or used to. It’s been described as very quiet and wouldn’t be much use for sessions. Search on YouTube for demo videos, there are at least 3.

4

I used to have a Reyburn brass low D whistle. I liked it, but I would have liked it even more if it had a slightly narrower bore and hadn’t weighed so much. But then, I feel that way about all the low D whistles I’ve tried. What I’d really like to try is one of those Grinter wooden low Ds, but that would cost a pretty penny.

5

Have you checked out any whistles from Steve Miller Music by chance? I’ve heard good things about their tone and craftsmanship, especially in brass. Might be worth shooting them an email to see if they make anything in a low D that might suit your needs. Failing that, maybe keep an eye out for a used Reyburn or Freeman.

6

Eeek, “Grinter wooden low Ds”? I’ll admit to being unaware that Michael made low D whistles! It’s perhaps not surprising, when we remember that he did an apprenticeship with the late Fred Morgan, recorder maker, who also died in a road accident. If you can make recorders and flutes, whistles shouldn’t be too hard. I visited Fred in his workshop in Melbourne way back when I was mulling making flutes, but quickly realised that recorder making for baroque music and flute making for Irish music were very different things.

I just revisited Michael’s web page, which has remained up and untouched these past five years. It makes no mention of his untimely demise, and thus reads a bit spooky, especially as it is phrased in the present tense but is copyright 2023. Someone recently mentioned that there is some intention of resurrecting Michael’s flute making business, but I know nothing more than that rumour. Apparently the property and all the facilities are still intact. Watch this space!

7

I mentioned the Grinter low whistles because I have the good fortune to own one of his low F whistles. It is the best low whistle I’ve ever played. My personal preferences in whistle design seem to align well with those of pancelticpiper who frequently posts on the topic. I tend to like whistles with a narrower bore to allow more balance between volume across registers and sweeter, more musical, high notes. I also have hand problems which cause me issues with low whistles that are too heavy, so the thin walled wooden Grinter whistles are nice in that respect. But probably not that relevant to the OP given that these are now rarer than hens teeth and more expensive than Copelands.

But just FYI, here is a link to a video of Callum Stewart playing a Grinter low D whistle. Kevin Crawford also plays Grinter whistles. I’ve seen him use Bb and F.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QZ6pW_RpC8

8

That link certainly shows what Michael’s Low D is capable of. Noting that that is a studio recording not a location recording as it appears. They were canny enough to overdub a few seconds of ambiance at head and tail!

So, all wood, fully cylindrical, thin walls, not too large bore. Where do you think the magic of your Grinter F lies, Paddler? The head looks fairly typical of modern whistles post Sindt. Any surprising features, or just very good attention to detail throughout?

9

I’m not sure where the magic is. I haven’t examined the head, window or windway carefully enough to draw any conclusions yet. I’ve played a few low F whistles, and so far my preferences seem to go with bore and aspect ratio. My second favorite, which is a Goldie, had the second smallest bore, and both it and the Grinter were much narrower in their bore than the aluminum Burke I used to own, which was also a nice whistle, but less well balanced across its range, in my opinion. The Grinter has a cylindrical bore and is wooden, but with a wall thickness similar to that of an aluminum whistle. But is lighter in the hand.

There may well be some subtle details going on in the head and windway, and the balance of window dimensions with a given bore aspect ratio may also be critical. There are a whole bunch of subtle trade-offs you can make, via very small dimensional changes, the net result of which can be quite noticeable to a player looking for a specific balance of playing characteristics. I hope to one day try making a few low whistles so that I can vary some of these parameters and do a side by side comparison in order to understand more clearly what is going on, but that is just another item on the ever growing to do list for the distant future.

In my opinion, a lot of whistle makers attempt to boost the power of the lowest notes, at the expense of the musicality of the highest notes, by going for too large a bore, and end up with an instrument that is too unbalanced and almost unusable at the high end. This is just my opinion, of course, and is specific to my preferences and usage of whistles. It seems to me that the challenge of achieving a nice musical balance across the full range of notes, seems to get harder as the key of the whistle gets lower, and it could well be just impossible to make a low D whistle whose low end is loud enough to be used in a session, without its high end being really objectionable.

At some point, as you go lower (somewhere around F, say), I’d rather just play a flute. Interestingly, I have a kind of inverse preference at the high end of the pitch range, where I’d rather play a high D whistle than a piccolo. That is probably still true down to Bb or A. Around low G and F, I could go either way, depending on context, but below that, a flute just seems superior.

Well, this is all now well off topic, so apologies to the OP.

10

The material used to make a whistle or flute isn’t supposed to affect the sound produced by it, so I wouldn’t limit the search to brass. What counts is the geometry, while the main impact of wall thickness is on how much the skin on your fingers bulges through into the tube, which means that bigger holes benefit from thicker walls, while thicker walls make a heavier instrument and push you towards lighter materials. Where the material affects the sound is if the wall of the bore contains a lot of energy-sapping air pockets, as with softwoods, so you need to try to fill those with oil or coat the bore with epoxy to create a rigid surface.

I’m making flutes (so far cylindrical-bore quenas and quenillas) out of craft resin (food-safe epoxy) and getting nice tone from them with good tuning across two and a half octaves, but I’m also experimenting with magnetic attachments to convert them into whistles. I want to make them in low D next, my aim being to cover the range D, F, G (which I started with), A, high C (which I’m also making now), and high D. I’m using a 15mm bore for the high C instruments, which is likely at the wide end of the range and may make the upper notes of the third octave unplayable, but it provides good power over the rest of the range. I may try a narrow bore for these in the future, but for now I’ll stick with what already works. I need to choose a suitable bore size for the low D’s though, so that’s what I need advice on - I need to make tools for each size of instrument and it takes time, effort and money to set all that up.

So, my starting point will be to make a quenacho in D (low D flute), and then to make a whistle adapter for it. I want to try going narrow with it, but how narrow do you think I should go with the bore?

Can you give me the bore sizes in the Goldie and Grinter. I know they’re low F rather than D, but I can still use that as a guide. I need to know how narrow I can go while maintaining a decent lowest note, and at this stage I’m not looking to maximise volume, though in any case, with the ability to remove the adapter and turn it into a flute, it should still be able to play loud when it needs to.

11

Do you have a link to Steve Miller Music? I’m having trouble finding anything.

12
13

The Goldie and Grinter F whistles I owned had bores well under 19 mm, so well under the “optimal” line in the graph Tunborough posted. In contrast, my Burke F whistle had a bore well over 20 mm.
For what it is worth, my personal preferences in whistles, from high Eb all the way down to low D, all fall well below the “optimal” line on that graph, and mostly within the lowest green shaded region. I do not prioritize volume for session use, but rather focus primarily on balance and overall musicality (whatever that is) in a home or recording type setting.

14

I think I should go even narrower than the diagram suggests. It has the optimum place for a D whistle on 23mm, so to find for a D the equivalent of sub 19mm on an F whistle I’d have to aim for 21 to 21.5mm, and yet the modern orchestral flute appears to be only 19mm, and surely a low D whistle ought to be viable with that width of bore too. So I might just compromise and go for 20mm, which is good as I happen to have an aluminium pipe of that width which I can build it on (starting with a layer of resin-coated paper and then fattening it up from there while rotating it with a motor). Maybe whistles need a wider bore to help generate more volume, but they don’t need so much grunt if you can take the whistle adaptor off to play it as a flute, so this design should lend itself to gentle playing at a microphone while still being able to go loud in situations where it has to to be heard over a din.

15

I’ve only played a couple of different low D whistles, the best of which was an MK which has a bore slightly under 22 mm.

For some reason that I do not understand, the optimum bore (by experience) for flutes is substantially smaller than for whistles in the same key.

16

Yes it’s a tricky compromise with Low D’s.

What I want to try is a Colin Goldie narrow bore Low D. It might be the perfect Low D for narrow-bore fans like us.

17

In that case, I’ll try 22mm as well (which can also be built on a standard size pipe) and focus on getting both 20mm and 22mm up to the best quality I can, then I’ll be able to explore sizes in between later and try to evolve them towards an ideal. Thanks Paddler and Tunborough for the helpful information.

18

I share your affection for brass whistles and am also amazed we don’t see more of them. You might ask Phil Hardy (chieftain/Kerry). I know he made a few Low Ds with aluminum head and brass tube.

I have one of his Chieftain Gold Low D whistles. I solved the weight problem by clipping a thumb rest on it. Good luck in your quest.

Greg

19

A brass Ronaldo Reyburn came up on the irish flute store last week , so I snagged it.

A friend had a Burke brass at the session last week. I didn’t play it but picked it up - it was lighter than I expected.

I also bought a Rui Gomes high D brass with my leftover funds.

20

I just posted a Jerry Freeman tweaked low D for sale in the UIE. Yes, it’s quiet and plays much more like a Generation than other makes of low whistles.
https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/fs-jerry-freeman-low-d-sold/106798/1

Stephen