This review is from happyturkeyman. He got the whistle from me recently and sent this review.
Allright, here goes my “review” of the Jubilee practice low D. Sorry for the lack of pictures, but there have ben many reviews for this already and there are some on the Jubilee website, too.
Firstly, my background, so you know where I am coming from. I have played Boehm flute since 5th grade (not that long ago ), and more recently have picked up harmonica, sax, trumpet, and (duh) whistle. My first whistle I bought on an impulse while acquiring cheap instruments on ebay. I went with the Jerrytone I saw, and was so happy with it that since then I have bought four gens, a LBW, and a clarke.
This one is my first experience with the low whistle, so, immediately on taking it out of its tube (which happened to be immediately after waking up), I attempted to play it and produced a dazzling array of tones that generally have no right coming out of an instrument. The C# sounded good though. I quickly realized I was not covering the holes all the way, and thus, decided to admire it for a bit in silence.
I looked it over carefully, and took some measurements with my trusty ruler. For those of you unfamiliar with the rudiments of sound physics, for an instrument to be pitched an octave lower it must be twice as long. Well, the “sound-producing” part has to be twice as long, but none of that matters. What metters is that this whistle is approximately twice as long as my jerrytone, putting it at 23 inches. The larger holes, 1, 2, 4, and 5, appear to be 7/16 of an inch diameter (or thereabouts). The smaller two are both around a quarter of an inch each.
The whistle is a behemoth, made of one inch grey pvc. The fipple is a larger gauge pvc, around the 1" stuff, and a solid piece in the middle. that whole deal is cut at about a 45 degree angle. If you look at it straight on, it resembles when you put the smallest spaghetti-o in the medium, and then a put those two in the larger one (with a break in the second ring as the windway). If you have no idea what spaghetti-o’s are, I’m sure there’s a picture somewhere . The maker recommends drawing to spruce it up, and there is a great picture on his website with someone who drew on celtic knots. By my mental calculations, I have about 65 square inches to draw on. I had, since first laying eyes upon it, envisioned it covered in red sharpie-drawn stick figures. On fire.
Picking it up again, I decided to give it a few more toots before eating breakfast. Being extremely self-concious of my grip, I managed to slowly go up and down the scale without leaking. However, my fingers are pretty narrow, and, as such, I ended up squeezing very hard with my left hand.
My next bit of progress came when I changed that left hand a bit. The holes are so large I find it best to use the normal fingerpad mode as opposed to pipers grip on my left hand. It is very feasable on the right hand too, but caused a good amount of strain. I settled on half-pipers, just as I use with my gen Bb.
Now that I was relitively comfortable with it, I decided to relaly pay attention to the tone. This whistle sounds better than I thought was possible to from pvc. In fact, it sounds better than I thought was possible from a cheap whistle (18$ plus shipping from the store). The tone is clear with a slight but constant flow of husky undertones. Amazingly, this is the same sound I hear when listening to (drooling ever) sound clips of overtons. It is much fainter, and somehow not as pretty apart from that husk, but the comparison exists. It has that dual nature of being clear and deep for the slow stuff and husky and sweet for the fast stuff.
In summary, it has a little of the sweetness of my gen F, a little of the deep huskyness of overton sound clips, and a little of the breathy chiff of my jerrytone. My mom, a flute teacher and musician extrordinaire, commented that it sounded a bit like an alto flute. Describing sound is a pain, so I shall go no further.Going up the scale proved to be efortless for a little more than one and a half octaves. At about high B it starts gulping air, and the C is particularly bad. However, the tone that high on the scale is not squeaky, shrill, airy, or obscenely loud. The air requirement isn’t much of a drawback considering.
My final schpiel: This whistle has a good, versitile tone. It handles well once you get used to fingering low D’s. It is as consistant and as in-tune as the rare, great inexpensive whistle. The only drawbacks are the high air requirement on the top few notes, and the slightly weak E (and the look if you’re one of those freaks that buys whistles based on look). This is the cheapest low D whistle, I hear, aside from making one yourself. Heck, at 18 dollars and a little shipping, it’s more like a steal than a purchase. Even if this were three times as costly, I would feel confident recommending this for anyone who knows the top of a whistle from the bottom.
For more info on Mr. Bingamon’s instruments, check out:http://jubileeinstruments.messianic-webhosting.com/jubilee.htm > (main page)
or
http://jubileeinstruments.messianic-webhosting.com/prctlowd.htm > (Practice low D page, with pictures)
peace out.
In his review HTM mentions “large holes” and “straining” his right hand. Just to keep things in perspective, I thought that the whistle had tiny holes but I have large hands. I know it has the smallest right hand spread of any low d I have ever tried.
Regarding the tone. I agree that it has a deep, pleasing tone. I currently own an Overton. I am not sure I would go so far as to say it compares TOO closely. It is a nice sound though.
The air requirements are fairly substantial (on par with or slightly more than a Shaw low D), but not NEARLY as bad as the previous rev of this whistle. I had one of those for evaluation too. THAT whistle would suck your lungs out from lowest to highest notes 
. This one is fairly reasonable until about the middle of the upper octive.
I would suggest this whistle for those looking to get a feel for low d’s, especially if you have smallish hands and you think you can handle the air requirements.
) to not pick up on it.