I’ve read that at some point that Brian Howard redesigned the fipple for his Low D Whistle and that this new fipple is markedly superior to the old one.
I have a Howard Low D that I acquired 5-6 years ago. How do I tell if mine has the old or new fipple design? There are no vendors in my area who stock the Howard and i don’t know anyone else who owns one, so I can’t make a relative comparison.
If someone could give me some measurements/specs of the old vs. new, I’d much appreciate it as I’d like to order a new fipple if mine is indeed the old design.
Steve, yours is very likely the old design as I think the new one came about within the past couple years. I have an old one around here somewhere, but the differences were very subtle, yet effective. The biggest difference was in the shape of the windway. The exterior of the mouthpiece was nearly identical to the old shape. The new ones give a stronger bottom note and easier reach into the upper octaves. Overall it gives more consistency to the instrument. I had to buy my new mouthpiece directly from Brian Howard off of his website at a price of around $30 shipped. It was worth it.
The whistle with the old fipple was tough to play,
especially in the second octave. If yours is
doing just fine, you can get the notes easily,
and so on, well, if it works there’s no need
to fix it. But if it’s tough to play, the new
mouthpiece will probably fix that.