Might excellent day this is. I just got my Clarke Meg and Dixon Low D. Might excellent. The Meg is so beautiful (in oh so many ways!) (except maybe the fold in the back)
Mighty whistles they are!
The dixon is so easy!!
'Twouldn’t be a rolled-tin Clarke without the seam!
It sounds like you’ve got the perfect whistles to start off with! Actually the Dixon low D is about the best whistle for learning low whistles there is!
Good luck!!
Eric
Just wanted to know: what exactly do people mean when they say ‘sweet tone’? I’ve read some reviews of the Clarke Meg and some said it was ‘sweeter’, but what is sweet in this sense? (my Meg sounds Recorder-ish, AFAIK)
i second the dixon being good value for money 
my only gripe is that it’s a tad bit quiet for my tastes. i never expected it to use so little air! after being so accustomed to the flute, this is a pleasant change, but of course..had to learn not to overblow.
after playing the dixon low d for some time, going back to the normal sized whistles is shocking. the feadóg feels small in my hands…and the sweetone, feels fragile 
i’m not sure what ‘sweet tone’ means to others but to me, it’s anything that’s delightful to my ears.
i prefer my walton & feadóg
Well, having attended my first session with my whistles, I can definitely say that the Dixon is not a session whistle. I could not hear it at all above the other instruments. It’s still a favorite of mine, I just love the sound of it when playing solo.
My Chieftain A and low-F, on the other hand, are great session whistles. In fact, with the A, it’s quite possible to dominate a piece.
As far as the fingering issues with switching back and forth from high and low D, all I can say is that I got used to it. You do have to be conscientious about playing them both, though. Getting the A and Low-F seemed to help somewhat as well, since now I’ve got whistles with a full range of fingering spans.
A funny thing has happened with my high-Ds lately. I have a Clarke Original, a Clarke Meg, a Dixon, and an old Soodlum. The Dixon high-D has much the same characteristics as the low-D, though not quite as quiet. The Clarke drives me crazy with it’s high breath requirements, though it does sound nice. I absolutely loved the Meg right from the go, and it was fast becoming the whistle most likely to be used in session. The Soodlum, well, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with it for years. It always seemed to be full of squeaks and squawks. Then, a couple of days ago, after practicing a while with the Chieftains, I was attempting to play the Meg and the Dixon. Both were sounding pretty awful, mostly because I was over-blowing them. So for grins, I picked up the Soodlum, and it sounded great. It seems the problem with it is that it hates tentative players. When played with confidence, it actually sounds pretty good.
On 2002-08-06 06:05, Caoimhin wrote:
Just wanted to know: what exactly do people mean when they say ‘sweet tone’? I’ve read some reviews of the Clarke Meg and some said it was ‘sweeter’, but what is sweet in this sense? (my Meg sounds Recorder-ish, AFAIK)
When I say a sweet tone, I mean a tone which is is low in chiff, low in breathiness, and the harmonic overtones blend with the note and don’t stand out as layers of sound (though there should be some… too mathematically pure of a tone stops sounding sweet and starts sound flavorless…)
On the boards, I avoid talking about a ‘sweet’ tone at all because I think everybody here means something different by it!
–Chris