That said… He no longer tweaks them. Buy one or don’t. If you need the best $10 whistle, spend a few years working on that picking up speed thing, the breath control thing, the articulation thing, and all the other things that give a player that discernment. Then apply that discernment to choosing the best $10 whistle out there. What you will have is the whistle you think is best. And others will disagree with you after having applied their hard earned discernment only to find that the whistle they think is best is not the one that others think is best. And on it goes in perpetuity. There is NO best $10 whistle. Only opinions of which one is best.
Your efforts to engage others and get their input is to be applauded. But, in the end, you must choose the whistle that is best for you. And, in the end, the only way to know that is to play the whistles. You will never hear what others hear the way they hear it… You will only hear it the way you hear it. And that renders their opinions to a status of just that… Opinions.
Buy a Gen. Buy a Feadog. Buy a Walton. It’s 30 or 40 bucks. Play them. Choose the one you like. Give the others away. Call it a win.
Before you blame the whistle, play it three weeks everyday for one hour.
Set it aside two weeks if you don’t like it, then come back to it. Play it for another few days.
If you don’t like it, get rid of it, but remember, the old timers we respect didn’t have our options.
But if you really like it from the get-go, hang on to her. She may be the one.
Thanks guys. But I think you’re taking me more serious than I am or maybe my light-hearted tone is not evident in my typed messages.
I understand that a lot of this is a matter of opinion and I’m really not agonizing over the $10 or so whistles.
For my ancillary whistles (and that’s what I call them for now outside of the High D’s) I’m getting a Generations Bb and a Waltons and a Feadog C.
Then I plan on getting that Susato Oriole 4 pack.
I was concentrating on getting something a little better in the primary key that I’m practicing on = D.
So I got the Mellow Dog and I have a Chris Wall on the way. Then i’m going to get an O’Brian and a Killarney.
Not because I think any of those will magically make me a better player, but just because I want to. And I want to have some whistles with decent reputations in the stable.
And then hopefully I can attribute the squeaks and squawks and so forth to my bad playing, and thus correct it, and not a bad whistle.
And I seek the opinions of other more experienced people, at the same time while putting forth what I like in whistle, such as one with less chiff or airiness to it, to reduce the chance that I’m going to willy-nilly get something that I really wont like, because all I had to go on was the manufacturer’s or seller’s description of their great product. But it’s you guys that have had the practical experience with this, that or the other.
I do think I understand where you’re coming from, being new to whistles myself, I bought a selection of cheapies to try out, & I enjoy playing the various keys at different times, but I’m putting my money where I want a decent sounding whistle, & for me, that is in the lower regions, low A, low G, & low D.
I will still play my cheap high C, & D, even my high Eb, F, & G at various times, just for the fun of it, & I’ll take out the Bb too, when I feel like a change.
I’m too old to worry about being a ‘good’ player, I’ve got them to enjoy making some music - & anyway, most of the squeaks seem to have disappeared now.
This is really a discussion that’s been had here hundreds of times before. Going through it again is not going to resolve the question as the elements of belief, denial and confirmation bias are always strong in some people.
After all, how can an expensive whistle be less responsive and harder to play than a cheap one?
I don’t think there’s a way of convincing people not open to the idea that it’s just about within the realm of possibility that a Generation or Feadóg can be played effortlessly without having ‘to muscle thorough’ any problems. We’ll keep trying to make the point though. How’s that for a new year’s resolution?
I would have thought they were all identical, pretty much, but…
The other day I happened to be left alone with a few dozen boxes of whistles – Generation, Walton, Feadog, Clarke and Schilling. Naturally, I tooted out a few carols on quite a few of them. To my surprise, there were fairly well defined differences…
The Clarkes of course were conical and sounded like Clarkes. Never mind that.
The Schillings were abso-freaking-lutely horrible. Where possible, I filed away a few of the more egregious defects out of the kindness of my heart but most of them remained barely playable. There were a few other ‘lesser’ brands that were almost equally horrible. Really horrible. If some luckless child got one in their stocking, they’d give up trying to play it in half an hour.
Now for the others:
There were a bunch called ‘Feadog Pro D’ that were head and shoulders above the others in the lower octave, and also (for some odd reason) quite a bit heavier than any others. They were a bit finnicky in the upper octave (then again, I can’t really play, so I’m sure it would have been fine for anyone else).
The regular Feadogs were good.
The Generations varied – I picked a few different ones out and for a terrible player like me, there were definitely quite a few that were hard to play. Then again, there were many that were fine. The lower octave was not as lovely as those Pro Ds.
The Waltons varied a little more – many were fine, but many had feeble bottom notes, or were just generally hard to avoid squeaking on.
After a couple of hours, I had formed about the following scores in my mind:
Feadog Pro D 9/10
Feadog 8/10
Generation 7/10
Waltons 6.8/10
Disclaimer: I’m no whistle guru, and maybe some of these boxes happened to be from good or bad production runs.
Considering that we’re talking about a world in which everything is well under 10 pounds, I see no reason not to go Feadog Pro all the way. Except that I already have several whistles, like everyone else here
Too bad this board doesn’t have something like a “like” feature where you can just acknowledge isomebody’s post without creating more ancillary replies on the thread. Oh well.
Anyway, I get email notifications when it come and comes in, so I have read and I do appreciate all the constructive comments.
In addition to the Generations Bb and the Waltons and Feadog C’s I decided to throw that Dixon brass Trad D in the mix with my order from Hobgoblin Music USA this time around. If past is prologue, with the service from Hobgoblin, they should be in my hot little hands a week from now.
That should bring my whistle ordering much closer to the end for now. Outstanding for the near term will be a Freeman Blackbird, a Cillian O’Briain and that Susato Oriole 4 pack.
For now I continue to mostly practice on my old Dublin Susato D and my more recently acquired Dixon DX 001.
Socializing up front is the whole point of this website from its beginning. If you have something to say, then you say it and be counted.
I wouldn’t be so quick to compare C&F’s pre-Facebook ways to later formats with like/dislike functions; think of us instead as akin to a hands-on traditional craftsman for whom the latest marvel of 3D printing has proven irrelevant to his work. “Likes” and “dislikes” are only anonymous drive-by votes, not conversation, and as such don’t meet the behavioral criteria for socializing - which, again, is what we’re about here. Besides, everyone knows those “like” numbers can be falsely represented, and it seems these days that people tend to even expect that, so its value is frankly lost on me. You get none of that iffy business here, and vive la différence.
I really like this site, (& one of my harmonica forums), because of its social nature, I hated the FB linear format when I tried it - long live forums such as this.
Please don’t neglect the Susato. Yes, they’re plastic. Yes, they’re (relatively) cheap. But I own two high(ish) end whistles - Abell and Milligan - and the Susato is up to gigging along with either of those. Some of the more available ‘cheapies’ are wonderful, others are dreadful - as others have said, you really do need to play them to check. And finding a cheapie that can play beautifully gives me a buzz - I only paid a couple of quid for something that can hold its own with my Millgan (just). But in my (limited) experience, the Susato high Ds usually work well, cross the octave without de-tuning, and can hold a high C# without screeching!
or maybe my light-hearted tone is not evident in my typed messages.
