I love getting packages in the mail. 
I just received a secondhand Dixon high-D duo (thanks, Bob!) and have been playing it for a couple of hours now. Wow! I’ve found the perfect whistle for me. There’s no one thing outstanding, really, it’s just good. Everything’s balanced nicely.
It’s very well-made, although there’s a couple of spots that you can see that it’s handmade (which is fine by me). It’s solid, too, without being heavy. I can see that the blade on the whistle head was hand-tweaked, and the mouthpiece just feels right – it reminds me of the Copeland-designed one on the Sweetone. The piccolo head is a neat touch, too – I can’t see myself using it a whole lot, but it’s a neat option – it’s put together pretty well and is in tune across registers (but it doesn’t look like you can move the cork), and the embouchure plate feels like a concert piccolo.
(I’ll repeat here that I strongly discourage getting this set if you’re thinking of playing the flute and haven’t picked up a flute before; the piccolo’s just not the place to start. The low-D set, I imagine, would be perfect for you, though.)
Back to the whistle head. This whistle sounds great. I pretty much only play Irish trad, and the tone is even across three registers with just the right timbre to fit in at a session – it doesn’t have the slightly-overwhelming pureness of a Susato or the hollow chiffiness of a Sweetone. It sounds a lot like a brass whistle, really.
It’s a little louder than my other favorite, my ten-year-old Feadog, but at the same time it’s got more dynamic range. I find on the Feadog that I have to lip around so much to get in tune that trying to play quietly also means playing flat; the Dixon lets me use dynamics without having quite as extreme tuning problems as the Feadog does.
Speaking of tuning, it’s the only whistle I’ve played where cross-fingerings work without any extra thought. On my other cylindrical whistles (Generation, Clare, Feadog) they’re either markedly different in tone, or out of tune.
It’s also very quick and responsive to play – I found in a couple of reels I know well that it was letting me pull off cuts and rolls quick enough that I was speeding up. I never got the feeling that it was touchy, though – it only plays what you tell it to, but it does so right away.
I’d strongly recommend this whistle for those who need a solid performer. If you remember from the Zen thread, I was looking for a whistle which would fit in in trad, be reasonably inexpensive, and be reproducible such that if I damaged one, the next would play pretty much the same (ie, not Generation!). I think I’ve found my whistle. No more WhOA for me! (<- famous last words)
(I’ve got a secondhand Dixon flute on its way to me via David Migoya, too. I’ll drop a note in the Flute Forum when I’ve had a chance to audition that. I think I’m going to owe Mr Dixon a pint if I’m ever by, given the number of his instruments I’m ending up with without ever actually sending him money.)
Happy tootling,
- -Rich
