Thanks for the advice, guys! 
I may be back for some more in the near future… 
Strange… I could have sworn that G was still wrong (even allowing for L2, L3 and R1 ‘covering’ two holes each)! 
golly G 
Right, of course … it’s xxxooo with the thumb. Sloppy reading on my part.
readability, that’s what the space between the hands is for…
Back again!
Could anyone recommend a UK based whistle company that sells reasonably cheap whistles with thumb holes (or will put one in for me)?
Thanks 
.
I’ve never felt any particular need, in terms of ease of fingering, for a thumbhole in preference to oxx ooo. I am somewhat persnickety about intonation, and so I use whatever fingering for C natural gives the best tuning. On my homemade low D, that’s oxx ooo, by design. On my Freeman Gen D (an excellent whistle) the best intonation for C natural is obtained with oxx xox AND a slight drop in breath pressure. That in itself, in most instances, is no problem.
However, there’s a certain type of rocking figure (ecgc acgc), occurring in for example The Humours of Scarriff and The Chicago Reel, that presented me with a problem on this Gen. The fingering transition between the G, the A, and the oxx xox C natural was awkward but undoubtedly doable, after some practice. The lowered breath pressure that oxx xox took, though, made it seem impractical. This same passage was easily manageable on my homemade low D that takes oxx ooo at a breath pressure comparable to the higher notes.
Eventually I opted to drill a thumbhole into my Gen. That totally fixed my problem with the ecgc acgc figure, and has made several other passages marginally easier to finger. I liked it. I went and drilled thumbholes in ALL my cheapies that don’t take oxx ooo very well.
But, as much as I like the result of the thumbholes on my Gens, I still don’t find it as convenient or esthetically pleasing as a whistle that happily responds to oxx ooo. I haven’t tried putting a thumbhole in any of my oxx ooo whistles, and I don’t think I’ll ever be motivated to.
High my friends,
I just want to share my expiriences with drilling and playing a thumbhole into standard-cheap SUDSATO-KILDARE whistles.
I you want to have one, it’s easy to make it by yourself - it takes only a few minutes to drill a small hole and to open it up until it’s in tune. It does’nt matter, if the hole is set in-line or a little offset, just like you prefer it - it is up to your needs:
I made this improvement on every SUSATO I own - and of course in any other of my DIY ethnic-windinstruments .
Happy X-mas to all:
Thank you for the video demonstration I have a Susato Kildare so I must look more into how the thumbhole might make the whistle more versatile for my playing.
I play with a c thumbhole and wouldn’t have it any other way. It is more in tune, has a better tone, is easier to play, and I can do more things tonally and with ornamentation. My Burke whistle has a thumb hole and so does my tweaked Freeman Generation (thanks, Jerry!). I don’t really buy the traditional argument: people just aren’t used to it. The only situation that the tradition argument holds any weight is in competitions, as whether or not you agree, you will be disquaified for using a thumb hole in any fleadh.
I guess it is extra work to learn how to play a thumbhole, but it never made sense to me why that would be a problem. Playing music is extra work in general! When I started the concertina, I had to start from scratch. Instead of blowing like on the flute or whistle, I was squeezing, and there are 6 c naturals for 4 octaves. In short, playing the concertina is a lot of extra work! Also, different concertinas have different note layouts, which can cause a lot of problems for C#. Instead of declaring that one way is right, I put the extra time in and can play any concertina. Push C# on the first or second button, I can do it, never mind shoving in an extra pull or push C# somewhere, too!
I am not saying anyone should do it, but until you have spent a few weeks with it and tried to make it work, you can’t say that you do or do not like a c natural thumbhole. Music is hard. Switching to a keyed flute took me a full year to get used to. After a day, of course I didn’t find the c natural key easier than cross fingering! After a year, I got really frustrated any time I played a keyless flute and there was no key for c natural. By now, I’m used to it. I can play two different vented fingerings for c natural or the key on the wooden flute, and I can even play the c natural hole on a wooden flute, too! On the whistle I can do the vented fingering, the c natural thumb hole, and in competitions I do the half hole because when it’s important I put the extra work in (sounds great in airs, too). On the silver flute, I play the notes as they are designed (foot joint, first finger, and 4th octave cross fingering), and when I played classical I could do all sorts of harmonics and trill fingerings that I haven’t touched in a while. For flute and whistle, that amounts to 8 different unique c natural fingerings on flute(s) and whistle. So, to me it seems odd that anyone would complain about learning one extra type of fingering to make their music better. Especially since if you want to make your like easier, you can always just press “play” and let someone else do all the hard work of playing music for you 
In that video you also briefly mentioned the possibility to use more holes.. that got me thinking. Isn’t having only 6 holes in the whistle a completely arbitrary decision? I tried playing with using the left hand pinky for the fourth hole (instead of the right-hand index finger), shifting the right hand down to the lower two holes. It only takes a minute to get adjusted to it, and then it basically feels the same as playing the “normal” way. But I’m then left with two perfectly working spare digits on my right hand.. well, I know someone with small hands who can’t reach the bottom end of the whistle with the pinky, for playing that low C#.. that, at least, should be easier. The right hand ends up way down there..
-Tor
Not exactly. It’s pretty darned well thought out based on the prevalent major scale used for most music in Western cultures. So it is not at all arbitrary. And it is far from the only instrument with such a tuning scheme.
That being said, there is no reason not to make whistles with any other configuration of holes although some would debate whether the resulting instrument would then be a whistle in its traditional sense. A ten hole layout is my favorite for a chromatic scale using the thumbs and pinkies for the extra holes. And interestingly enough in relation to this thread, the “C natural” is generally cross-fingered or half-holed in that layout. The spacing is tight on high D whistles, It becomes workable (with my hands) on the keys of Bb, A and G and starts to get tough on the stretch for the lower keys.
Feadoggie
who makes a 10-hole whistle? it sounds interesting! i’d be willing to give up a thumbhole c-natural for a fully chromatic whistle.
who makes a 10-hole whistle? it sounds interesting! i’d be willing to give up a thumbhole c-natural for a fully chromatic whistle.[/quote]
This reply assumes someone is making their own whistle out of something like PVC pipe…instead of a hole for the left thumb, why not drill two smaller holes instead of the first hole, so the half-holing could be precise? Maybe I am not understanding the purpose of the thumb hole.
I don’t presently know of a commercial maker of a ten-hole whistle. I recall someone, maybe Paul Hayward, may have dabbled with one, as surely have others, but my memory is a little fuzzy on the subject. I know I started making them after playing a ten-hole fife for many years. I am sure a maker like Colin Goldie could hook you up. There’s not much of a market for them based on my whistle making/selling experience. As I said, “traditions being what they are” the ten-hole design looks like a radical and persnickety upstart along side the tried and true six-hole design. It’s about as popular and trendy as seven-string guitars. Obviously some regions of the world have other traditions or at least can think outside of the box.
Doesn’t everyone make their own whistles? 
That arrangement doesn’t usually vent the C natural note adequatley. It ends up being weak. You can try it though, just get some pvc pipe…
Feadoggie
I have been playing a C flute for over 40 years and was at the convention in NYC a few years ago where I went to a seminar on Irish Sessions. That is where I first heard the penny whistle played well up close. I really liked the Burke and purchased a brass with the thumb hole. It was more comfortable from the first time I played it. My thumb is used to having something to do and I couldn’t see why I wouldn’t want one. It seemed to be a win-win for me and I love it.
Hope this helps.
Donna
I saw the thread, read a few posts on the first and second page and now I am skipping to the end so please excuse my ignorance if someone else has already suggested this. I saw some posts about a 10 hole whistle so this might have already been mentioned.
I have tried a few whistles with a Cnat hole. One of them was an Abell black wood whistle that was on loan from Judy K. (thank you BTW). Anyway, Taped off the damn thing and continued to enjoy the whistle.
Most recently on the Bracker tour I received a low D with off set tone holes (a plus in my Humble opinion) but had a C nat hole on the back. Again, tape the damn thing off and continued to enjoy the whistle.
And now I will mention my push for the D + C whistle that has a low C nat for your pinky. Gary Humphrey made me my first D+ whistle and it was a little different but I found the low Cnat occasionally useful but also notice that it was a perfect high C nat if popped to the high note. The part that I found difficult was that the holes where not ergonomic enough to make it comfortable or easy to use my pinky when needed. The bore used was also a C bore so the high notes were a little harder to blow.
Anyways…YMMV
Cheers!
Nate
On my newly added Bracker D Plus models I got the pinky hole with a fair amount of offset, to make it really comfy. The whistle has the wider bore of a C whistle, but that is important to get good solid bottom notes for D and C. I also got the high end notes still easy enough to blow. In addition the D Plus 2 has a left hand thumb hole for octave D (alternative D), which is also useful as an octave hole to blow the second octave softer, by half-covering with the thumb. The C nat hole was sacrificed for this purpose, but, as you say, you got an alternative C nat by overblowing the bell C note.
In any case I find the C nat thumb hole more useful on low whistles than high ones.
See also this topic: https://forums.chiffandfipple.com/t/d-plus-whistles/88308/1
My opposition to the C natural thumbhole is more philosophical than real.
I would never order a whistle with one, but I picked up a Burke Low D that has one and it doesn’t bother me any. I just put my thumb there and forget about it. And who knows? One day I might find some use for it, a tune which has tricky High C’s in it or some such.
But philosophically it represents people coming from other instruments (the Boehm flute and recorder in particular) who for whatever reason can’t accept the whistle for what it is and what it does, aren’t “all in” on the whistle. In other words it appears to represent a level of dilettantism.
Moreover, the crossfingered C natural represents a shared technology in traditional Irish woodwinds between the whistle, flute, and especially the uilleann pipes, on which the crossfingered C natural is a distinctive and supremely expressive note.
In my opinion the crossfingered C natural on whistle and flute sounds BETTER than the same note created with its own hole, and moreover allows for much greater scope of technique (rolls and semi-crans and a more expressive sort of bending).
BTW people have likened the added C natural hole on an Irish whistle to the thumb C key on a Boehm flute or the thumbhole on a Kena but these are false analogies, because those were always fundamental parts of the fingering of those instruments and not an aftermarket attempt to make those instruments play like some other instrument. The Kena’s thumbhole doesn’t play the flat 7th, by the way, but rather the octave of the fundamental, in other words the thumbhole of the kena is like that of the uilleann pipes or Scottish pipes. (The flat 7th on the Kena is done by half-holing the hole that the upperhand index finger sits on.)
(EDIT:) Looking back, some of my statements above are a bit harsh. Heck, if Theobald Boehm had merely “accepted” the early 19th century wooden 8-key flute “for what it is and what it does” he wouldn’t have devised his flute, and we wouldn’t have our modern clarinet, not to mention the saxophone.
I admit to have daydreamed about somebody like Yamaha coming out with an injection-moulded plastic soprano D Irish Whistle, with Low C, and recorder-style double holes to make it chromatic. I for one would find such a thing very useful!