I noticed someone has a Bb Sindt for sale on Ebay. Why are Jon Sindt whistles considered so rare and valuable? I understand the value since I owe a full range of these whistles. Is Jon no longer making Whistles?
Just asking.
He is making whistles. He’s not cranking them out for mass sale, but you can email him and ask for a whistle to be made. He made me an “A” whistle last September. it took a few months. Great whistle
It is a matter of perspective. I suppose the seller is thinking they don’t come up in the used context very often. It is true that you can get one made. I don’t know what the waiting list is now days. I have one and enjoy it. I also bought a set for my son with a Bb and an A body. Both were purchased used on C&F and purchased over a period of a 3 or 4 years. So “rare” to this seller may mean you can’t pick it up off the shelf or find stacks of them on a website somewhere.
Folks in the high end flute and whistle may think of rare as something not seen for sale in several years, with a maker with a waiting list over a few years or possibly deceased. But we are rare birds ourselves.
I saw the post and thought it odd tbh…seller says that it is extremely rare in this key Bb…I don’t think a Sindt Bb is rare at all…let alone extremely rare…was probably only played by a little old organ lady, once per year at Christmas eve Church service as well… 
Good selling feature I suppose.
If a seller says something is ‘rare’, they are just trying to hike up the price.
Yeah, I’m also in the ‘old computers’ crowd, and ebay is full or ‘RARE!’, except for the cases where it’s ‘ULTRA RARE’, never mind the actual rareness..
A facebook-friend of mine just bought a Sindt in Bb. He said, he didn’t even have to wait as Mr Sindt had one in stock. So much for rarity. However, John Sindt is 87 now … so who knows how long he will keep making whistles.
Yes the seller was gilding the lily a bit.
I bought a used Sindt A/Bb/B set (three tubes one head) here in the Used Instrument Exchange and no doubt it was excellent, the Bb being the best of the three, a quite exceptional whistle.
That seller’s hyperbole doesn’t compare to the nonsense people post on Ebay, especially about worthless tatty 1970s Pakistani bagpipes, which were invariably “recovered from a WWI battlefield” or “were played in the Boar War” (sic).
At the end of WWI there must have been hundreds of 1970s Pakistani bagpipes littered about the former battlefields. You couldn’t walk about without stepping on the things.
While we’re at it – Richard, how would you say a 2018 Killarney compares to a Sindt? Would it be worth trying to contact Mr Sindt and get on the waiting list? I’m seriously considering that.
Do Sindts in all keys have the difficult OXX OOO? Meaning, Sindt players must be good half-holers which I am not.
Off Topic:
Regarding bagpipes from Pakistan, I bought a new set in 1974 for $125 at a store in New York City. Within two weeks, there were huge cracks in two of the drones at the base. It never even made it out of the trenches. The store exchanged it for another set, which didn’t crack so I sold it after a year at a $25 profit which went towards the purchase of a $325 set of Hardies.
Quality whistles always.
Peccavi
Seán.
Peccatum maximum
‘Peccavi’
The most brief and brilliant example of a favourite British form of humour, the pun. In 1843 Sir Charles Napier conquered the Indian province of Sind (now southeast Pakistan), and was criticized in parliament in 1844 for his ruthless campaign. A girl in her teens, Catherine Winkworth (1827–78), remarked to her teacher that Napier’s despatch to the governor general of India, after capturing Sind, should have been Peccavi (Latin for ‘I have sinned’). She sent her joke to the new humorous magazine Punch, which printed it as a factual report under Foreign Affairs. As a result the pun has usually been credited to Napier.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BRITAIN
I absolutely love my Sindt whistles and I honor him as a master whistle maker.
I have one Sindt Whistle, in “A,” which Mr. Sindt made last September
It most respects it’s far and away the best whistle I’ve ever played. It’s just Fun, right away–it’s a pleasure to make music on. It’s easy blowing, it’s in tune, it’s got a sweet sound that you won’t mistake for a flute or a recorder. My daughter, 14, plays the sax, and she noticed right away that it was really good sounding and fun when she played it.
The only drawback is the C nat requires half-holing. The cross fingered C nat is way out of tune. I’ve lately been trying to get better at half-holing, but it’s not easy to do well–it’s not too bad on slow tunes, but anything fast I just can’t make it crisp enough. People do, so obviously it can be done, but I’m not sure it can be done by me. If I get better at it, then I’ll be emailing Mr. Sindt again!
The cross fingered C nat is way out of tune.
It may be worth experimenting a bit with different fingerings for Cnat, perhaps in combination with how you blow the note.
Just want to point out that crossfingering C natural and half-holing C natural aren’t mutually exclusive.
It’s standard on the pipes to do both simultaneously, and likewise I do that on whistles.
It’s not half-holing in the sense of fingering C# and having to bring the note down a semitone, but rather fingering C natural and “uncurling” the upperhand index finger to “shade” C, when C natural is a long note and/or emphasised note.
This in on a Bass A whistle, but you can clearly see (and hear) the “uncurling” motion of the upperhand index finger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJm6BQ-Qxcg
Also I’m in the habit of blowing C natural a bit more softly, when necessary, to keep its pitch down.
That all being said I want whistles to play an in-tune C natural using oxx oox (the bottom hand can vary) and if crossfingered C natural is more than a tad sharp I might put tape on that hole.
I don’t have any Sindts any more. I was able to compare a Sindt D to a Killarney D made a couple years ago, but not the current Killarney. My older and newer Killarneys play rather differently from each other.
(BTW on that video you can also see half-holing F natural (the note that would be F natural on a D whistle).
I have indeed experimented with variants of the forked C natural. Best results are 0XX XX0 with some embouchure fussing, but the tone is kind of manky. I probably just need to practice some more.
Personally I stay with ordinary (at least for pipers) C natural fingerings on whistle such as
oxx oox
oxx xox
Breath and shading take care of a bit of sharpness, if there is any.