Was given a Susato High D some time back. It was too loud and shrill for me so I gave it to a friend. She tried it for awile and gave it back to me saying again that it was too loud and shrill.
My question is there anything that I can do to quieten it down and mellow it some. I tried the tacky stuff on the exit of the window but didn’t seem to help a lot.
Think it would be ok if I could get this thing under control 
Jim
Hi Jim,
The Susato is best in a loud session or in a noisy pub. It’s not a unit for practicing at home. If you don’t have a quiet whistle for home, try pluging your ears.
If you’re ever in Dallas send me an e-mail at ninjarock13@cs.com. You can join our round robin session at the Cock and Bull Pub on Gaston Ave in Dallas. And at that time we can swap your un-tweaked Susato for one of my tweaked ones that are quieter and more round sounding. If you like.
TM
Play it outside.
Actually, once I played it in the pool room of a hotel. It was large and hard surfaced and the whistle sounded majestic.
Playing my Susato high D at about a 15 degree angle left or right, as opposed to straight forward, lowers its volume. Choose songs that are primarily in the lower octave. The high notes can be ear piercing. Playing outside is another good suggestion.
It can be tamed, but it takes some work.
For one thing the instinct is to back off those shrill high notes, but they will actually speak clearer and sound better if you go ahead and support them with a good firm airstream. At the same time, tighten your lips up. With practice you can learn to pull the shrillness out of the sound.
Also Susato whistles play better if warmed up a bit first before you try to play up in the stratosphere.
Finally, avoid playing a Susato in a small room. It is a louder whistle and isn’t going to sound good in a small, enclosed space.
There is no need to play outside, though. It may be a loud whistle but flute is much louder again.
–James
the best way to make susatos sound better is to run over them with semi trucks and burn the left over shards of plastic. if that doesn’t work you can always call an exorcist.
Thanks for the replies .. appreciate them. May end up in Dallas at the pub some night .. not that far in Texas mileage. LOL
HB Skunk … thank you for the kind words but prefer to keep my whistle and my entrails intact. Who knows … it may improve and I might live to be older than most and will need my entrails… it could happen. 
Jim
You can also tame a Susato by cutting out the blade, and replacing it with a straight blade, made from a guitar pic or the like. It gives the Susato a slightly more wood-like sound and reduces the volume. If you position the blade right you can also reduce the screetchiness of the upper notes.
Run a search for “straight blade” that should get you started, or let me know if you can’t find it.
YOu can also construct little “noodles” out of blue tac and put them on the sides of the windway hole, making it smaller. I tried putting one on each side. It worked pretty good. Blocked off about 35% of the air and about half the sound.
Three words: Clarke Original design.
To me the best thing about the Susato is the way a tune can be laid down with enormous liveliness and authority.
All of these things can “tame” it–replacing the blade, making a whistle mute of blue tac, etc–but there is something to be said for actually learning to play the whistle instead of making the whistle change for you.
If you want a “tame” whistle, Susato isn’t your best choice; you’d probably be happier with a Generation or Oak or Walton, something that’s going to have that ethereal, barely heard sound that floats above the session.
A Susato isn’t going to sound like that, and that’s a good thing. There’s a place for both kinds of sound.
–James
Hey, Jim, I didn’t realize that you had tried the Susato blade-replacement tweak. Did you do it yourself? How do you like the whistle afterwards? How does it compare to the untweaked ones?
Just to clarify, are you telling me I didn’t learn to play the Susato whistle because I’ve tweaked some of my Susatos? 
I used to practice whistle a good bit in my car while waiting to pick up one or more of the Undisputed Daughters from one or more of their many activities. I had to stop playing Susatos in the car because of the volume of the whistle and the closed in space consisting largely of glass. Never broke the glass, though.
Dale
I actually did tweak a Susato…I’ve tweaked 2 of them, one to death, one I did the blade replacement and it was ok but a very dead whistle compared to before. I finally threw it away in disgust, and bought another Susato. I’ve spent a lot of time learning to play that whistle, and I believe it’s been time well spent.
If you’re after the Gen sound I think you’d be better served to just buy a Generation or similar. If you want a purer sound while remaining more soft-spoken, buy a Gen and put a Hoover whitecap on it.
Bloomfield, nothing I wrote was meant to be a comment about your ability to play…I’m actually not sure I’ve ever heard you play. My apologies if it seemed like I was speaking out of turn. I am distressed at how often our posts seem to be at odds these days.
–James
Well, now I am distressed that I distressed you! Sure I didn’t think you were dissing my playing (though I couldn’t blame you for that either). No, what I meant is: tweaking your whistle is not necessarily a sign of resignation or a failure to master the Susato (or another whistle).
And good on you for trying to tweak it.
With this Susato (assume that you’re talking small bore versus very small bore), practice and experience are keys, in my experience. The loudness will never go away, short of tweaking, but the shrillness is not a constant. After quite a bit of time away from it (because of the qualities you mention) and mostly playing whistles from Mack Hoover and Mike Burke, I find that much of the shrillness is gone when I do pick it up. I regard this as being due to greatly improved control of the flow of air through the instrument. As others have mentioned, this is not a timid whistle, and is probably best played in a larger area. Earplugs also help!
(Edited to fix a typo on the last word.)
Ok .. I will give it a shot .. I live in the country … and neighbors are fairly tolerant out here
However .. should the police be called and I end up playing in jail .. would appreciate those who suggested that I keep playing this whistle to help with the bail!!!
It seems only fair
Jim
I have a really good friend, Sam McReynolds, who taught himself whistle. His father Pat is also a really good friend, and we three have played together for years.
Sam learned to play whistle on an old black Clarke original, then switched to Susato for everything but reenacting–he still uses Clarkes for that, I believe.
He can play a Susato all the way up to the high B without it hurting your ears–he is far better on a Susato than I am.
Last Christmas Pat gave him a Burke AlPro Session, and now that’s his favorite, and his Susato rarely gets played anymore, but if you can convince him to put the Burke down (not easy!!!) he can still make a Susato sing like a bird.
–James
Well, let’s put it this way. If I were playing a Susato in sessions here, and especially in private sessions where players much better than me are actually inviting me, that would be the last time they’d invite me for sure. For good reasons. Unless you really don’t care being heard over other players which are much better than you, or if your goal is to be heard over all other instruments, then the Susato is for you. But for the sake of a good session chemistry where you actually realize that there’s people around you, a tweaked Susato or quieter whistle is required.
You could argue that the flute is louder than a Susato, might be true, but you can’t compare volume of an high pitched instrument with a low pitched, it’s just not the same.
I think a loud whistle is important for very crowded/busy session, where you can’t even hear your own whistle. Wille week is a good example.