I’m new to tin whistles, but not to music. I’ve got a set of Susato sopranos (D,C,Eb) and a Clarke D soprano. I’ve been stymied trying to get control of the Susato’s in the upper register, but have no problem with the Clarke. Can anyone provide some advice on what I am doing wrong?
welcome!
a susato is not so balanced and needs variable blowing on some notes. it takes some practice.
it’s only worth it when you really love the sound of a whistle.
have you listened to sound samples yet?
http://www.tinwhistletunes.com/clipssnip/index.htm
i
When i first bought my susato i thought i had bought a dud, the upper register was horrible, or so i thought,
It seems susato’s require a bit more breath control then their metal counterparts,
In other words, you sometimes need to blow much harder in the upper register then usual to get proper pitch,
My problem was solved, wasnt the whistles fault, i just had to adapt
This has been my experience, others may offer a different opinion,
good luck
David
I know what’s wrong! You are trying to play a Susato!
Stick to the Clarke.
YMMV
Take the Susato somewhere where you won’t
bother anybody, maybe outside, and BLOW.
Start with the C tube.
Be careful on high A and B not to cover any of the lower holes on the Susato. That is, don’t leave your ring finger down. xoo oox for high B doesn’t work on the Susato.
three very easy ways to get control of your upper register come to mind.
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more expensive: get a burke.
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a little less expensive: get a water weasel.
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less expensive still: get a generation, replace the head with a hoover whitecap.
Easy Tweak
add a ring of “Fun-Tac” (a DAP putty) to the bore end hole. By reducing the diameter of the bore end hole, you will flatten your bell note in the first register(blow a little harder) but this will “stabilize” the second register with “backpressure”.
Susatos do take a bit of getting used to in the upper reaches, but they’re IMHO overall great whistles at a great price. If your budget permits, you might try some others, esp. cheapies, just to see where your preferences are. The new Jerry Freeman tweaked Generation ($36.50) is one I’m gonna try and will likely be easier to manage upstairs.
Um, not to sound too much like a rookie 
Where is the bore-end hole?
Dear Finkel: The Weekender approach to your problem is to chuck the whistle until you find one that doesn’t give you the trouble. Especially if you think tweaking whistles is an imposition on your diminishing lifetime. If you are younger than me, you probably don’t yet think that way…
I tried everything in the stores I could find, including high-end Harpers and Chieftains at Lark In the Morning in SF. I even bought a Sweet Maple D and a Chieftains A, thinking I would get better at 'em. Then I discovered CF a few years back. Read all the praise. Decided to take a chance on a Burke. Got a whistle that plays very smoothly upstairs. I am told that Sindt whistles have similar qualities. After a while, you realize that more experienced players will sometimes put up with a more difficult upper register if it blows louder or somehow stronger than the Burke (see basic whistle types on the main website) up and down the scale. Part of it is that they have only ever had a difficult whistle so it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, imo.
I have a guess that many people here could play faster and smoother (especially on high rolls on G, A, and B) if they had an easier upper register but they think its themselves that is the problem. If they can master the rolls on a hard-to-play whistle, my hats off to 'em and I am sure they are out there. You even start to wonder if you are inauthentic because you won’t put up with it…“If its good enough for Miko, then, etc etc.”
I have three Susatos, which uniformally offer a challenge above the 9th note of the scale (true for older Sweet Maple, too). I have two E’s which I can’t stand, but a C that is pretty nice. I replaced them both with Burkes and both the brass C and E are treasures, tho I will probably always hang onto the C susato.
My two cents.
If you want the easy, quick road to satisfaction, get a whistle that’s easier to play.
If you want to learn breath control that will one day make other whistler’s jaws drop, stick to the Susato and learn to play it.
Or you can choose the path most commonly taken, and start buying all sorts of whistles left and right… 
Seriously, a Susato can be mastered. It just takes practice and patience.
–James
Buy Serpents. Lots of Serpents!!! (… sorry, Dale … )
serpent
The pricing of the Susato is highly misleading. They look like the sort of whistle you would buy when you want something better than your low-end cheapo and yet aren’t quite ready to fork out on a high-end whistle. In other words, they look like the whistles you would purchase to learn on as soon as you get serious. Wrong. They actually require quite a bit of experience to play well.
I’d just about given up on them when I had high-end (and sometimes good low-end) whistles in all the keys I play in often. A year or so on I picked up a couple of Susato highs and was really quite impressed. In that time I figure I’d made the progress needed to play them well. In that in-between price range a Jerry Freeman tweaked somthing-or-other might well be what you want. You’ll know that someone with tweaking know how has sorted out playability problems for you.
Another great value-for-money choice would be a Syn.
finkelsj. That is not a silly question.
The “bore end hole” is the bottom of the tube opposite the mouth piece. This hole is a “playing hole” too, just like all the others on the side of the tube.
Now I’m confused 
I’ve got one of those 3 packs of Susato’s (C,D,Eb with one mouthpiece) and have been having problems with the D (but no problems with a Clarke D). I put the mouthpiece on the C and suprisingly I had no problems with the upper register 
I don’t know anything about differences between the C and D whistles other than the C looks a little bit bigger. Is there anything I can do to the Susato D to make the upper register play a bit easier? I still haven’t tried the ring-o-putty to try and create more back-pressure as was already suggested.
How a whistle plays in the upper octave, how touchy it is about flipping between the octaves, and how much breath it requires has to do with the relation of the bore diameter to the length of the whistle (among other things, of course). So, if you put the C body on the Susato head, you’re not changing the bore diameter, but you are extending the length of the whistle. That would make the upper octave a bit easier to reach and sustain. The Susato SB (smal bore) Ds are fairly wide-bored (in relation to the length) which makes them that much more challenging. If you compare the inside diameter of the Susato SB D with a Feadog, Oak, Generation, or Walton (not Mellow D), you’ll see that they have smaller bores. Many people say, btw, that the SB Susato C is the best Susato whistle.
I don’t play Susatos (although I have in the past), but just to offer what I can…When I had problems with the upper register, it was because I was being too timid. I wasn’t blowing with enough back-pressure because I was in some enclosed/public place (home has many roommates and is “public” for me). I still have issues with the upper register, actually, but only on certain whistles.
I second the suggestion to GO OUTSIDE, somewhere where you won’t be heard by others. It’s a lot easier to just wail on the thing and experiment when you know you won’t 1) kill the cat 2) incur the wrath of family/neighbors and 3) split your own eardrums. Once you wail for a while, uninhibited, you can see what works best on your whistle, and then adjust your playing for when you are back in regular practice areas. This is what has helped me.