I’ve noticed a number of threads that talk about the virtues of being able to test several whistles at a local music store to pick the best ones. Unfortunately, here in New Jersey I’ve yet to find a single music store that allows a buyer to try a whistle, harmonica, or practically anything that is mouth blown. This is assuming that a store will even have tin whistles to try. There are a couple of dealers that will special order the better quality whistles for you, but only one at a time, and you are expected to buy it. The less expensive models come pre-packaged and are sold that way: no opening the wrapper allowed.
How does everyone else do it? Where are all these stores that carry whistles and let you try them?
Tim, I think that “try a bunch” discussion was misleading. I have never found a store that allowed it either. It’s probably pretty unusual, but I guess some do.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’d want to try whistles in a store like that anyway!
Tim - Yes, in my experience, the cheaper whistles often come packaged (sometimes with a book of tunes and/or cd) and thus you cannot try it first; nor will most allow for opened returns that you may have blown into. What I did early on was just buy cheapies as I traveled around, always looking for shops and I was pretty lucky with that. I also ordered online from several shops (although some are no more and I haven’t done this in quite a while).
There’s a shop in NYC (Rod Baltimore) that sells high end whistles and they are very good about letting you try them before plunking down as much as several hundred dollars; they’ve even let me go down in the basement and play my lungs out on several of them. (That should keep readers away)
Then there’s the internet - a bunch of online shops (listed somewhere on this site) where you can purchase cheapies through high enders; you need to check with each shop to see whether there’s an inhouse whistle guru who can be real helpful and what their return policies are. In some cases (high enders) you wind up having to send it to the maker if there’s a problem anyway, so over the past bunch of years I’ve mostly bought and had made direct from the makers, who have been generally real good about accomodating your needs. Some who are very far away will even play various whistles for you over the phone.
Experiences with music shops that don’t specialize in folk music are generally not the best - they don’t carry much and often don’t know or care much about “those things.”
one of the local music stores that sells whistles where i live allows a person to test whistles. the store owner cleaned them with some kind of solution once i was done. he didn’t have any of those shrinked wrapped whistles in his store. the stores that sell harmonicas usually have a bellows that allows a person to test things.