Gosh, here comes again this @#%@#$ that “high-end” whistles are better…
As far as I know the only wooden whistle that I heard was used (and won) in an All-Ireland competition (though I don’t want to use that as a standard for tradition) was a Lon Dubh. I’m not advocating in favor of this whistle, just saying that is not common that most of good players prefer wooden whistles or is much appreciated by the judges…
All you anal-retemptive collectors, stop bragging about WhOA, spend this money investing at listening to old good players (that mostly play “cheapies”) instead and go practice!
There are whistle players and whistle owners Romulo. Telling for the second category are the guys who rave on the forum about their latest whistle being the best ever, only to offer it for sale within a month.
To my surprise I heard last year that certain aluminium whistles are not allowed at some of the competitions and that “traditional” plastic mouth pieces are demanded when entering.
Not quite sure that’s true although I wouldn’t put it past them. On the other hand, one local girl was told (by an adjudicator in the county Fleadh) she’d do better if she was seen to make a commitment and buy an expensive whistle. I ordered a Sindt for her and she did get second or something like that in the under 16 in the All Ireland. I doubt it had, in the end, anything to do with the whistle.
I am not sure which festival it was at the time it was mentioned but it was not the first time we heard it. Well the Sindt’s I would think count as “traditional” as they come close enough to the “plastic” head designs and surely it was her playing that made her win but the Sindts are really nice players which can help I presume. The silver body one we have certainly is a really nice sounding one.
The vehement “campification” of this perenial discussion is exciting my goat.
He wants to leap from peak to peak of the piles of combatants heaped on either side of this ridiculous surmize.
B-A-A-A-A my Gen can spell the lord’s prayer on the head of a pin!
B-A-A-A-A My Abell is ready and willing, Gabrielle himself owns one of these!
Keep it up guys, my goat needs the exercise
Personally, I’ll just stick to my understanding that a whistle lying on the stage will only attract as many bums-on-seats as a mime pretending to whistle. It’s all obscure performance art until you put the 2 together, and the combination prooves to be up to the task. Most critical of all is the argument so conveniently missing in these jousts - i.e. which stage is the performance on?
Perfectly OK for the fleadh folks to insist on hobbled horses - imagine a trotter who’s allowed to canter. At the sesh, well, how much spilled beer can your whistle stand? If you’re playing for your cat, then the audience might be more demanding. If you’re playing on a close-miked sound-stage, then there’s another set of demands, studio work .. high-production movies … etc etc etc. Consider that the most famous whistle of all (the Reskian flute) could not produce a note - but Picquard seemed to win the crowd with it regardless.
I know a player who makes every whistle he plays sound like a Gen, and yet he still appreciates a good one (gen or hand-made).
Still, who am I to get in the way of such thrilling etertainment. And like I said - consider my goat, he’s been looking a bit flabby of late. Let the joust resume!
Pagh! THese people who think they can buy talent! In my day we had to train our dogs to chew a whistle from the leg of a kitchen chair the day before the fleadh! No fancy chair either, none of this mahogany edwardian malarky! And the dog had to have 3 legs … or less! Now that’s talent. Besides which - people with fancy whistles have too much money and I hate rich folks.
Well My whistle is made of hand-carved 10,000 year old mamoth tusk! It has a sound that cures psychopaths and calls the birds from the sky. GOd himself borrrows it from time to time - you don’t see him with no cheap-a**s whistle. AN dyou poor folks always making some obscure virtue of not being able to get of the couch and earn a decent living. Bah!
I am sure that any kind of whistle in the right hands will sound great. As a beginner and a very mediocre classical guitar player, I am thoroughly aware that a “bad workman blames his tools.” And I have certainly blamed mine in the past.
So, I have a pretty good Rodriguez guitar. I’ll never be too good for it, so I cannot blame it for my failings.
I have just purchased a used Burke D Al Narrow. It may never happen that I can blame my whistle for my failings. However, even as a beginner, I had a quick play of it last night (Star of County Down, Merrily Kissed The Quaker’s Wife) and the difference in sound quality between my Freeman tweaked Feadog and the Burke was very evident - even my wife said “Wow.”
In the end, I am sure that there are some spectacular differences between real, real cheap and real, real expensive, but many differences may be quite subtle and there may be a series of diminishing returns with the higher end whistles - but I don’t know.
What I can compare is HiFi. I build my own amps and use vacuum tubes in my creations. Now in the HiFi World, there’s a real can-of-worms, especially when we’re talking high-end and high-expense. No, I do not have $1000 speaker cables (my homemade ones work great), and I certainly cannot afford $7K cables. But I have listened to (not owned) $30K speakers and $10K amps, and there are sonic differences, but they’re not vastly different from $5K speakers and a $1K amp. Again, there are diminishing returns.
But the Burkes, MKs, Copelands, Overtons, and lately Humphreys I’ve acquired over the years have been some of the best “buys” I’ve ever made in my life.
Pleasure to Price ratio is off the charts. Yep…to me, these whistles are elegant, wonderful “cheapies.”
Very elegently put. My whole whistle collection still costs significantly less than my daughter’s cello. So im going to enjoy my (relatively) cheap musical entertainment and say my pleasure to price ratio is definatelly falling on the pleasure side.
You’ve named the two most oppositely voiced whistles in the entire whistle universe. Burkes are at the extreme “pure/sweet” end of the voicing spectrum; Feadogs (tweaked or otherwise) are at the far opposite, “complex/reedy” (even to the point that they can seem raspy to some ears) end of the scale. Neither is inadvertant.
My Burke is a composite high D. It is an average whistle. It doesn’t get any notice at all when I perform solo in public. That tells me a lot.
I bought the Burke used, on the strength of many glowing reviews on the forum. I figure it is worth posting that warning to other experienced players, that I didn’t find my Burke to be anything special. My Susato, Sweetheart, Hoover whitecap all rate better to my own ears and to audiences. All three put together cost about what the Burke costs.
that “high-end” whistles are better…
