A friend here in Santa Barbara is a decent enough whistle player, but even though he has played for 30 years (or more!), he has never owned a whistle that is in tune between registers. Of course, I don’t think he ever paid more than $10 for a whistle. His skill and his whistle collection are at odds with each other.
OK, his birthday is coming up …
What D whistle is most in tune for under $200 ? I don’t care about tone, I just want my friend to be able to play in tune with us.
I’m a novice so my expertise is limited but check out the very recent thread on Silkstones. In tune seems to be the comment often mentioned about them. -You’ll want to get a tunable whistle no matter what make though if I’m not mistaken. That way you can tune it to match other whistles, instruments etc. —uh, you don’t care about tone? -mike
In your price range there’s a lot of great whistles to be had. Burke, Hoover, Water Weasel, Sindt and of the good tweaked models, etc. Do you know what it is he’s playing now and how old it is? Sometimes a whistle’s mouthpiece (if it’s the all plastic variety) will change in time due to teeth, windway collections of various sorts, and the occasional ‘tweek’ by it’s owner.
I’ve heard some amazingly good and perfectly in tune Generations, Feadógs and even Waltons - although they can be rare.
If he never paid more than 10 bucks for a whistle in his life after playing for 30 years, he would probably not fall head over heels about anything that doesn’t have a similar mouthpiece to a Gen or Oak.
As someone said, it seems to me he’s used to cheapies, so I would say the best whistle for him would be a tweaked O’Briain whistle, which is like 30EURO. It’s perfectly tuned and plays like a charm, it’s my favorite whistle anyway.
Probably couldn’t go wrong with a Burke Black Tip, $130 plus $10 shipping, and probably readily available. For me, it’s the perfect whistle, not “too” anything or “not enough” anything.