Greetings all Fellow Fipplers. I am on the verge of purchasing a high end Low D whistle
to replace the Howard I recently lost(how does one lose something so big!) I had played it for about a year and was doing very nicely thank you. Now,to my questions(s)Is there a Low D thats considered a better whistle than a
Howard,as I personally loved it, as did every
person who ever heard it.I bought a Susato Low D and although it’s a great whistle I missed the wonderful tone of the Howard.I would appreciate any advice from anybody who has tried the various Low D’s out there
Paul E. Davis
[ This Message was edited by: musicofireland on 2001-09-15 18:41 ]
I dunno about “better” than a Howard – it’s hard to judge “better” and “worse” up there – but in my experience, even though there are a lot of great Low Ds out there, there’s nothing else that has the Howard’s unique timbre.
Wow, Rich. That surprises me. I think of the Howard as the “Generation of Low D’s.” I heartily recommend a Ronaldo Reyburn Low D. It’s rich and full, but doesn’t take much air…a delightful Low D. It looks like a Howard with a wooden fipple, but it plays like a dream. He has a couple of different models. Tell him you want the one I have (that he originally sold to Jason King), because I have tried the other model and I didn’t like it as much.
Unless Ronaldo has made some changes, the finger stretch is extremely long. I couldn’t even play the thing with your standard Piper grip. You have to use your RH pinky don’t you Jessie?
Heck, if you were happy with the Howard, why not just get another one?
Wow, Rich. That surprises me. I think of the Howard as the “Generation of Low D’s.”
Hrm. I certainly wouldn’t put it up there with the engineering-masterpiece sort of whistles; it’s definitely more of a “workhorse” sort of whistle. I more meant that when you get past the low-end low-D whistles, you’re probably going to end up pretty happy with the whistle you’re sent, if you wanted a whistle like that one. (Er, that’s perfectly clear, right?)
But the tone of the Howard is, in my opinion, unique among Low Ds, more than you’d expect tonal variation between whistles. It’s a little harsher, I think. I tend to play it as if it sounded like pipes rather than as if it sounded like a flute, if that helps any. But if you’re used to the Howard tone, you’ll have a hard time finding a whistle from another maker that sounds like that.
That said, some don’t like that tone. I do, but I don’t tend to use my Howard for typical low-D fare; I tend to approach it a little more piper-ish than flute-ish.
I like Howards, too. Other higher end
options are Overtons and, my favorite
low whistle, Copeland D. The latter is
a wait, and expensive, but I’ve never
seen anything I thought nearly as good.
Of course there are low Ds I’ve never
played…
Jessie