I definitely cant say Burkes are all the name and no quality. It takes a whole 5 seconds of looking at one to realize it costs more to make than the majority of other whistles. Advanced o ring tuning slide. Delrin internal windway with metal exterior. Nickel (I believe) plating. And they are known for playing incredibly consistently, and with excellent tuning. I’ve talked about other whistles, like MK, and people always say theirs played differently. Or, they had 2 that played differently in the same key. Some people say their MK low D overblows too easily and has a bad low end. Mine actually has a fairly good low end. burkes are insanely consistent. If I bought 5 other burke A’s, all different years, I bet they would all play almost identically.
Goldie are a more simple construction than Burkes. I have no idea how to make the flat side Overton style whistle heads. but the tape tuning slide, no special finish, less parts, etc. But are Goldies over priced and all name? Absolutely not.
MK also cost a lot, and are a similar design to many other whistles. but I definitely think my MK is better than my Alba, both low F’s. My alba is also an old one, the new ones may be improved design. No hate for Albas.
Reyburn the construction is less fancy than MK or burkes. But I still think they are excellent whistles. They vary a bit from key to key in how they play, but the alu low D and brass D/c are fantastic.
Morale of the story. I love all my ‘over priced’ whistles. Which to me are worth the money.
I wouldn’t be unsure, because 13 seconds is plenty long enough to discover the tuning of the octaves, the solidity of the low notes, the nimbleness of octave leaps, and whether the 2nd octave is easy and sweet or stiff and harsh.
These performance characteristics are built in by the maker and can be quickly ascertained; 13 hours or 13 days later the whistle will still play how it did in the first 13 seconds.
That’s what it is. It doesn’t take a long time to discover some characteristics. Or most of it. And after some weeks a whistle can be played as it wants to be played.
But if it works the kind it overblows, the balance of air use and the volume difference in both octaves, that’s not hard to find out quick.
Sorry, it’s not easy to explain a difficult and complex thing like this in a foreign language.
My issue is that while it doesnt take long to figure out how it plays, it can take time to adjust your playing to how it wants to be played. I have a bad reputation for picking up whistles and selling them too early. The ones I kept longer I ended up disliking less. Which doesnt mean I learned to love them, I still ended up selling them. But the things I dislike usually get less bad over time.
I know what you mean, Narzog. The thing is… If a Dixon or Killarney or Lír or something else under 100$ feels still bad for me after some months it hurts. If any whistle over 250$ feels like this and the time to return is over it hurts so much more. I don’t have much money to spend. So I don’t want as many as possible whistles. I don’t want to be an expert in this case. I only try to get close to the holy grail for me.
This is fair, I do the same thing. To me its not about if a whistle’s actually good or not, its do I like it more. If I don’t it gets sold or returned haha. I ended up selling my Goldie last week. I made sure to play it exclusively for like a month to try and adjust to it. But when I went back to playing my others they just felt more natural for me. I don’t think I’d ever hit a point of being able to play the Goldie better than my MK, so if someone ever asked me to play I’d always pick up the MK. So at that point no reason to just have $400 sitting on my whistle rack. But this is why I try to always buy used. I may have even made a tiny profit.
Indeed he’s an engineer, and precision and theoretical perfection are his goals, which he achieves with amazing consistency.
Unlike most makers who use a few sizes of tubing for all sizes of whistle, so that the bore-to-length ratio varies from size to size, Burke uses dedicated tubing for each size to maintain the ratio he feels is ideal. (Burkes consistently have a wider bore than most whistles of the same size, leading to the characteristics many trad players don’t like, and that “classical” musicians do like.)
The wonderful thing about Burkes is every size plays exactly the same, which professional non-trad players love. You can grab any whistle from the roll and know it will be voiced precisely the same as all the others. For years my roll had Burkes in Low D, Low Eb, Low E, mezzo F, mezzo G, mezzo A, high C, and high D and they performed well in hundreds of gigs.
I’m guessing that pushback from people in the trad community about the fat-bore playing characteristics has led to Burke’s introduction of so-called “narrow bore” models, which in fact aren’t narrow, but similar to the standard traditional bore sizes used by most other makers.
Right away I know how a whistle plays, how much blowing each note wants, where the octaves break, and so forth. I feel I can get out of a whistle all it’s capable of giving in under a minute.
Then there’s the style part, which takes me many hours, spread out over weeks and months, and which for me is a subconscious thing, as without thinking about it the way I play shifts to suit what the whistle likes to do. (That stuff is purely in the trad-Irish realm. For studio work a whistle isn’t called on for more than playing what’s written on the page they hand you.)
For me, if a high D whistle is called for I play my c1980 MK1 Feadog. No other high D I’ve ever tried, including whistles of wood and silver and costing a thousand dollars, has been its equal.
My earlier Killarney is very, very close but lacks a bit of the patina or colour in the tone that the Feadog has. (A later Killarney I bought has a rougher tone than the earlier one.)
If a high C is called for I play my c1980 Generation which I feel is the finest whistle I’ve ever played, period.
If it’s Bb I play my c1980 Generation which I’ve heavily modified by chopping the head and gluing it back together. That, and a Jerry Freeman Generation Bb, are the two best Bb’s I’ve owned.
For Low C, Low D, and mezzo F I play Colin Goldie whistles.
Sounds really good. I still dream of a goldie, maybe some day Im going to get one. But it would take some time. I just bought a good mandolin and a fine violin in the last two years. So money (especially with 3 kids) doesn’t fall down from the sky.
You need to constantly check for sale boards like here and the irish flute/whistle one on facebook. They come up here and there. If you see one for an ok deal and buy it right away, you can sell it off for no loss if you dont like it. Might be a long wait, I only see one every couple months haha.
My Goldie Low C and Low D were bought used, while my F was bought directly from Colin.
Buying used has the advantage Narzog mentions, being able to in effect rent instruments for free for as long as you wish, plus the fact that you can get instruments in your hands right away. This is a huge advantage for makers with a wait list.
I’ve never been able to get a used whistle from a Facebook group because they sell instantly. I would have to stay on that page constantly to have any chance of getting anything.
I’ve been on the other side! When I put up several things on a FB group my inbox was immediately flooded with people wanting everything. That’s when you realise you priced things too low, something that an Ebay auction prevents. (I’ve had things on Ebay sell for ten times what I had priced them at.)
Edit for the Kelly: Wonderful tone in the low octave. Comin to g, a and b it’s like a screamin old hen. So sad about it. But for 130 $ not worth the price.
In comparing a large number of Low D whistles the thing that jumped out was how makers try to balance having Low E not be feeble and High B not be harsh.
On Low D whistles Low E is generally the weakest note, not surprising because it’s usually the hole furthest from its acoustically correct position, which in turn makes it usually the smallest hole.
Why High B should be harsher, more incalcitrant, more finicky than any other 2nd octave note is, I suppose, simply because it’s closer to the mouthpiece. (The same thing happens with clarinets’ "throat tones’.)
Anyhow just comparing Low E to High B quickly tells you most of what you need to know about the voicing and balance between the octaves on a Low D.
It wasn’t g, a and b, of course, it’s a C whistle. It’s f, g and a.
I also had a Setanta high C. The air balance was very good, so it seems possible to find a good way of construction. But I understand the problem.
__ hello again!
I have just ordered and received another low D from Colin Goldie. The other one I have from him is a medium hard blowing, 0.85 mm. This one is 0.95 mm, and it’s much more to my liking. obviously, I would need to spend some more time with it to really get to know it, but I think I like the soft blowing instruments better than the hard blowing ones. I really like to push when I play a whistle, but I do prefer the sound of a soft, blowing one, with less of the “forced” sound. just thought I would share this in this thread
