Well, I picked up my whistle from Tommy Martin at the Irish Christmas in America tour on Dec 1st. First I’d like to say that I really like this whistle. It’s very well made and is fun to play. I’ve been playing it a lot so that I could give a good, well thought out review. This is a start and I will add to it in a few days after one more person has a go at it.
I’ve never done this before, so I hope it has information that is helpful and informative.
The body is thin walled 1/2" brass, window/ramp section is ebony, delrin fipple with curved windway. You can see in the picure that the windway is cleanly cut and the ramp is smooth.
The brass tip slides over the wood. It looks like a pin holds everything in place. It all fits together nicely with no edges or pokey things.
What looks like a tuning slide, just above the tone holes, isn’t. The tuning is done with the mouthpiece, and there is a lot of adjustment. I will have an exact range on Friday and update (sorry). The slide is pretty tight, so I would recommend using cork grease or something similar.
The tone holes are well spaced, evenly round, and smooth.
There’s nothing jagged or unfinished on this whistle. It’s obvious that Tommy puts a lot of time and effort into his whistles and that he cares about what he does.
The volume is definately loud enough for session playing without overpowering everything else. I was really comfortable playing it in a group and never felt like I had to tone it down a bit.
It doesn’t take a lot of air, but it took a good 45 min to an hour of playing to really get a feel for the whistle and be able to get it to sound good in the upper octave. It’s easy to hit the higher notes (G & above), but they sound just a bit off if I’m not giving the right amount of pressure. They never squawk, they just aren’t quite there. Once I got used to it, it was great.
The tone is very bright, and it doesn’t have that ringing bell sound that I’ve heard in some other brass whistles. It’s not airy, breathy, or harsh. There’s just the slightest touch of edge to the notes. It’s really pleasant to listen to (my husband even said it sounded nice). I don’t dread playing a high B at all because it’s just not a shrill whistle.
I still need to check the tuning to give accurate information, and will update on Friday (once again, sorry). I did play in a session, though, and never had a problem with sounding “off” from everyone else. I’m still trying to figure out the fingering for C-nat. OXX OOO sounds fine for a quick note, but for longer ones it doesn’t sounds kinda flat to me.
I don’t know what this relates to, but I’ve noticed that I can’t be sloppy with this whistle. Mistakes are pretty noticeable on it, so I’ve had to pay more attention to my floppy fingers.
This is a nice whistle. I know some people will say that a good player can make a $10 Generation sound great, so why spend the extra money. My response is this whistle makes me feel like a really good player. I get a sound out of this whistle that I’ve never been able to get from my Gen.
