It’s official, from an interview with the queen of the fingertips herself which has just appeared in this month’s Irish Music magazine (page 46):
“I’m playing a mixture of John Sindt’s whistles, and some of Pat O’Riordan’s, I have a Michael Copeland low A, and sometimes I revert to the old Generation.” She also mentions a “lovely old wooden Bb whistle that looks like a recorder” which has two keys, but isn’t suitable for performance.
So she’s finally given up on the Generation’s, huh? Whatever is the world coming to… 
On 2002-09-16 19:50, energy wrote:
So she’s finally given up on the Generation’s, huh? Whatever is the world coming to… >
Maybe she got tired of digging through barrels of them trying to find that elusive “good” one?
Last night, at one of the local sessions, I got to play on of the elusive good Generations–it was really a sweet whistle and fun to play. I played it for part of the session but still wound up sticking to my Burke Al-Pro. While the Gen was definitely a good whistle (I tried to take it), it’s still not quite like a hand-made whistle.
On 2002-09-16 19:50, energy wrote:
So she’s finally given up on the Generation’s, huh? Whatever is the world coming to… >
Hardly news as such, since she was already playing Sindts back in 1998 if not before…
[ This Message was edited by: Jens_Hoppe on 2002-09-17 05:00 ]
On 2002-09-17 04:59, Jens_Hoppe wrote:
Hardly news as such, since she was already playing Sindts back in 1998 if not before…
True enough..but the O’Roirdans and Copelands are definitely news. The theory generally has been “Generation lovers buy Sindts because they sound like Generations”. Copelands and O’Roirdans don’t fit that bill.
Well…
Actually, even back in 1998 (when I took one of her workshops), she was talking about O’Riordans and Copelands too. Here’s an excerpt from an email I sent Dale back then (November 1998):
She had a John Sindt Eb-whistle with her (which he’d given her), and described her Sindt whistles as her favorites, along with her Pat O’Riordan low G. When I asked her about Copeland’s whistles, she said they were lovely too, but she seemed more enthusiastic about Sindt’s & O’Riordan’s.
Cheers,
Jens