A friend pointed me to a review of the Reyburn High D on Chiff and Fipple earlier this year. I have been playing whistle about 4 years and my whistle of choice was the Clarke Original D, but from a combination of weather conditions (I live in tropical Australia) and my own high moisture production, my Clarke Ds rusted out in about 12 months or so. The Reyburn High D offered a combination of Clarke chiff and durability. Its third attraction was mention of extra volume, since I most often play in company with a group whose mainstay is a big piano accordeon.
My high D had about a 3 weeks waiting time, and it came with one of the older maple heads. I liked its workmanship and (despite Steve Jones’ comments about the general design of high-end whistles!) its overall looks. Its performance also delighted me. It had the chiff of a Clarke D but with the promised extra volume. In the upper octave it had the purity of a high-end whistle, but for a fairly novice whistler its bigger attraction was a notable stability. In the heat of group playing I tended to overblow high A and B rather often, but the Reyburn seems to cope with this. I also found that in quiet situations I could blow considerably softer or louder without losing the note, thus adding an extra dimension for variety.
A further bonus was speed. Although Steve Jones mentioned this in his Chiff and Fipple review, I had never played a Generation Eb, so had no basis for comparison, but I did quickly notice a difference from my previous whistles. Reels, and the second or high strand of many jigs that had previously proved difficult, suddenly went like butter on glass.
Since then I have played the High D at home, in a small purely accoustic group in fairly good sound situations, but also in open air, in competition with crowds and generators, in larger accoustic sessions, and most recently with the large local bush band, who use amplifiers (though these were not at full blast at the time). In company the High D has proved consistently stable, fast, and audible to me - which was a major problem with other whistles. At the bush band gig I could still hear myself, without a mike, through the combined efforts of our own piano accordeon and the adjacent, miked, teabox bass. At the same time, the Reyburn doesn’t get raucous - at least, I have had no startled looks or frowns from nearby players.
The weather and my own moisture production did create some problems. With the first maple head, the glue dissolved, and to my consternation it slid off the barrel in about a week. An extra pin kept a second maple head on, but the glue dissolved again and the tuning went permanently off. To his great credit, Ronaldo Reyburn coped with the repeated glitches and e-mailed cries of distress, and eventually sent me a new prototype head, made completely from Delrin. This has proved equal to the combination of me and the local climate on nearly every test. In very high temperatures (like, 38C - 100F ) it has gone scratchy, but a solution appears to be a quick wash-out - one of the joys of the Delrin head is that it’s completely washable - and hence, it seems, a cool-down of conditions inside the head - or the barrel, maybe, but so long as it works I’m not quibbling too much.
The Delrin head is neater overall than the maple head, although I may yet order one with a slightly longer air window, like the original maple head, because something about my tenacious sound memory insists the old head did, originally, sound more mellow. Otherwise, for me the Delrin High D keeps all the pleasures of its predecessor, most notably, volume, speed, stability, and that pure tone in the upper register. With the original head I did find, like Steven Jones, that it needed more air than I had been used to, but the high notes have never felt difficult to reach, as they do with some whistles. And though I find the Reyburn very stable in the upper octave, if I want to do an octave jump, as I do sometimes for variety in a song chorus, it’s very easy to get up there as well.
The C body came along in the process of head-adjustment. When I played it with the maple head it sounded a good deal more trumpet-like - less harmonics, perhaps, than the D - but with the Delrin head I don’t notice such a difference. It keeps all the other attributes of the D, although I haven’t yet used it as much. Since I’m by no means an expert at tuning, I haven’t been brave enough to trade C and D barrels during a performance, though I like having the option, so most C playing is on my old Clarke Original.
Overall, though, among the whistles I’ve tried, which include Waltons, Clarke Originals and Sweetones, a Feadog, a Clare two-part, a Burke Session High D and a Sindt High D, for my particular needs the Reyburn High D and C are as close to ideal as I’ve been able to get. And who knows what Ronaldo may turn up in the next year or two?
For those who want a look at the updated version, Ronaldo’s Web-site is
http://www.reyburnwhistles.com
Sylvia Kelso