Low Ds: MK/Burke/Reviol/Susato

Whistle
1

OK I received my green MK Low D yesterday, and this morning put it through a lot of tests vs my Burke Pro Viper, Reviol, and Susato (keyless).

First, visual stuff: The MK is a glorious glass-smooth deep green, with a sort of pearly gloss. The blade has been left shiny silver. The bit of revealed tuning slide is brass, which to me detracts from the look somewhat. I’d have preferred that the tuning slide match the blade, both silver. The whole whistle is a straight slender sleek tube without the tuning collar bulge present on the Burke, Reviol, and Susato, and the headjoint bulge of the Burke and Susato.
The MK mouthpiece is an odd shape which is ergonomic and feels good in the lips. I usually don’t like the feel of aluminum in the mouth and prefer the Burke’s delrin mouthpiece, but the MK is better than Overtons etc due to the shape and glossy feel.

All four whistles have similar tonehole spacing and weight and feel fairly similar in the hands. The Reviol I have is a matte black rough finish, while the other three Low Ds are smooth.

Air requirements: To test this I played through the 2nd part of the jig The Banner and saw how far I could get on one breath.
On the Susato and MK I could just barely complete the entire 8 bars, while on the Reviol I could last 7 bars and on the Burke only 6.

Volume: Not having a meter it was a bit hard to tell, but I thought the Susato had the softest Low E and the Reviol the loudest. The Susato had the loudest Low B, High G, and High B.
As for the power of the bell note/bottom D, the Susato and the Burke were the strongest with the Reviol the weakest.
As for Low E power, the MK had a remarkably strong Low E with the Susato next.
This brings up something that I think is important: the “breaking point” of the low notes, and to what extent the low notes, especialy Low D, E, and F#, have a similar breaking point. Often on Low D whistles the Low E tolerates less pressure than its neighbors which limits how much you can “push” notes for phrasing purposes. The Reviol’s Low E was a tad weaker than the Burke or Susato, while the MK was remarkable in that the Low E would tolerate exactly the same amount of “push” or pressure as the Bottom D and Low F#. In other words, all the MK’s low notes had the same “breaking point”.

Cuts/gracenotes: On some Irish flutes and Low D whistles certain cuts can destabilise certain notes. One I look at is the A cut on E in both octaves, and the A cut on Bottom D. On all of these the MK was the best. I could “push” the cut without the note breaking. I also tested Cran clarity, and once again the MK was superior.

Tuning: All four Low Ds are admirably in tune. The Burke has one tuning feature which it shares with the uilleann pipes however: low B is a tad flat and high B is a tad sharp, making it the ideal whistle to play along with the pipes.

C natural/C sharp is always an issue on Irish wind instruments and these notes vary from whistle to whistle. The Susato and Reviol have spot-on C naturals using the fingering
oxx ooo
while the Burke is a tad sharp and the MK is a tad flat. The MK prefers
oxo xxx.

The Burke had the best C sharp while the Reviol’s was the flattest.

Timbre is hard to put into words so I’m panning on making a YouTube video on which I will play all four Low Ds and people can decide for themselves.

2

Nice review of key performance attributes; thanks very much!

3

I just started playing and want to get me my own Low D (I play a friends instrument at the moment)
As I’m from Europe I’m looking for an european maker in case of problems.
I found a maker online at http://www.low-whistle.ch/ but sadly I’ve never found a review of those instruments.
Has anyone played those Instruments and is able to tell me if they are worth their price of 280€?

Thanks Pat

4

Low D beginner: I’m not familiar with those, sorry.

In the Low D world I’ve owned Kerry, Susato, Copeland, Chieftan, Shaw, Burke, Reviol, and most recently MK. I’ve had long-term loans of various Overtons over the years.

I would strongly consider a Susato keyless Low D as an introductory Low D. People often are dismissive of Susatos but this isn’t fair because they are very good Low Ds, superior to many expensive Low Ds I’ve tried/owned. You can’t beat the value.

After playing all the Low Ds above the MK and Burke are my favourites with the Susato not all that far behind.

5

Sorry, one thing I didn’t mention in the initial post was the ease/sweetness of high notes in the 2nd register.

The voicing on all Low Ds appears to be a compromise and to get stronger bottom D and low E a whistle ends up with a harsher/louder high B.

The Reviol has by far the nicest high range. You can attack high A and even high B with a soft breath and play these notes softly. No suprise then that the Reviol has the weakest bottom D and low E of the group. But wait a minute- didn’t I say above that the Reviol has the loudest low E?? Yes indeed. The Reviol’s voicing is very interesting and different from the others, and one feature is that the low E is weak, in that it must be blown very softly or it will break, but at the same time it’s oddly loud.

The Burke and MK have high Bs that must be blown strongly in order to have them sound in the 2nd register, and the high Bs are loud and have a harsher timbre than the rest of the scale. No suprise then that these have strong low notes, the Burke having the most powerful bottom D of the lot and the MK having by far the most powerful low E of the group.

The Susato’s high notes are in the middle, not as sweet and easy as the Reviol’s but more tame than the Burke’s or MK’s.
The Susato’s bottom D is nearly as powerful as the Burke’s, so one could say perhaps that the Susato has achieved the most even voicing of this lot.

I haven’t got round to doing the YouTube video so I’ll say a bit about these whistles’ timbre. The Burke strikes me as the purest, cleanest tone of the group. The Reviol perhaps has the most sophisticated tone, a timbre that’s sort of Native American Flute like. The MK has a bit of that Overton foggy tone, which sort of reminds me of a Kaval. When I switched back and forth between the Burke and the MK at a session the Burke seemed to stand out a bit from the other instruments while the MK blended in better somehow.

Another factor is tonehole size: the Burke and Reviol have large toneholes while the Susato and MK have smaller ones.

About tube diameter, the Reviol and Burke have the fattest tubes, the MK is a tiny bit slimmer, and the Susato is the slimmest.

All four whistles have similar finger-spread in the upper hand while the lower-hand spread on each is different, from narrowest to widest Susato - MK - Reviol - Burke.

The combination of narrower tube, smaller holes, and narrower finger-spread make the MK and Susato feel a bit more comfortable in the hands.

6

OK here is the YouTube thing where I play all four of these beasts back-to-back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkL06uOtZQc

Is it just me or do the MK, Burke, and Reviol all sound fairly similar in the video? It goes to show how deceptive YouTube videos can be, because in person they sound quite different. Even more, they play quite differently.

I tried to show as many aspects of the playability in one short tune as I could, putting a cran in at the start, a double-cut roll later, some tonguing, a tiny bit of breath-pushing etc. I also made a video of me playing Roisin Dubh on each but somehow the tonal differences of the whistles are clearer on The Banner.

Sorry for the “wee bobble” when I played the Reviol.

7

Thanks PCP - nice to hear them back to back. Sound certainly doesn’t come across hugely different on video but you’re a good player and able to make them all sound more the way you want them to. As you say, the feel and response of the instrument has to be personally understood.

Thanks again
Stephen

8

It’s surprising how similar they sound in the video!
I have an MK and a Reviol, and my band-mate has a Burke, so I know how different they sound in person.