My tweaked Clarke’s Original in D finally arrived from The Whistle Shop. They dispatched it quickly, and it travelled from Illinois to the UK in an impressive 2 days. Unfortunately UK customs then decided to spend a week processing it. Hard to believe that filling in a few forms takes longer than travelling half way round the world.
Now that it is here I am impressed with it.
The workmanship is excellent, with the reshaped fipple block finished to a higher standard than they come from the factory. According to my electronic tuner it is also in near perfect tune, unlike my untweaked Clarke that plays a little flat. Here is the new one next to my untweaked Clarke:
Compared to the untweaked whistle, it requires less wind, and has a sweeter tone particularly on it’s higher notes. It also has a slightly less breathy sound. The degree of overblowing required to shift octaves is different, so it requires a little getting used to in order to nail big jumps without landing in the between-octave screech zone. It’s no more screechy than my other whistles (less I think) but it’s screech zone just happens to lie at the breath pressure some of my other whistles require when going up an octave. I think I’ve mastered it now.
I think my other Clarke D will be jealous - it has in all likelihood just been supplanted as my most played whistle.
I also decided I fancied trying one of those double whistles. I didn’t want to spend any money though, so I “made” one myself with two of my older whistles I don’t play much, using an eraser as a wedge and some sticky tape. I covered the top three holes on the right whistle will sticky tape also.
It is ugly, but I actually quite like the sounds you can make with this. I spent most of this afternoon playing about with it.
Maybe not a “proper” instrument, but good fun I reckon.
Just playing the left whistle but bringing the second whistle as a “drone” during the chorus of slow airs sounds really good.
I am thinking of picking up a tweaked Clarke D as my first whistle. I’m FROM Illinois, though
Do you know if they carry a plain/unpainted one?
This thread is really encouraging. Having never bought/played a whistle before, it has been easy to do a lot of research, and still come up confused on what to buy to learn on. This seems like a decent whistle to go with after reading your review =)
The Tweaked Clarke from the Whistle Shop is very nice, but I’d recomend a Freeman Bluebird
as a first whistle. (My n00bish opinion.) Or if cost is an issue the Oak whistle is a real budget winner, though it needs a more gentle breath.
I had already went about purchasing a Tweaked Clarke D before the Bluebird suggestion came around… anywho, it arrived today Along with a Meg in C, just for fun and comparison.
I really like the tweaked Clarke. I’ve only had a few hours to play around with it yet, but I have been able to play some basic songs pretty easily. I don’t know anything about music, or how to read music… still trying to find tabs to songs that aren’t too tough.
However, the Clarke is very intuitive, and I don’t get any squaks out of it unless I make a mistake.
The Meg remains to be seen, but running through the scales a few times on it went really well. Being a complete newbie, I was a bit shocked to see that a C is bigger than a D! I figured it would be smaller. Heh.
