http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2577801376&category=47102
It’s made of cocas wood!
Why the hell is it that makers just don’t make a WHISTLE anymore? The thing looks like a Susato reject! 
Between this and the new “renaissance” in recorder shaped wooden whistles I think I’ll play a Generation for the rest of my life, just because it actually LOOKS and FEELS the way a whistle should!
…in my best Bill the Cat voice: “ACK!!!”
Actually, Brian …
That design is an historically accurate, traditional Celtic whistle. It just predates the whistles most of us are used to. If you go to the Royal Museum and ask to look at the musical instruments in the prehistoric artifacts section, you’ll see a 40,000 year old whistle made of bird bone with a clay fipple plug, that looks exactly like that.
Best wishes,
Jerry
That’s probably going a little far, don’t you think? We have no idea that they played anything resembling what we know as “traditional Celtic” music on them.
As far as the whistle goes, tin whistles, either rolled metal, or metal tube/plastic mouthpiece, are as traditional as it gets.
I think this M&E looks pretty bad, and it does rankle a little to use a timber as unavailable as cocus (and as sensitive to moisture) for a whistle.
I’d rather people spelled the stupid timber names consistently. Cocas wood?
Stuart
You takin’ me serious again, Stuart?
Best wishes,
Jerry
Let me assure you, the last thing it sounds like is a Susato! But the air requirements are on the high end, and your neighbors have to be tolerant. Its very different from anything else I’d played, and will certainly have its proponents. They just won’t be the shy retiring sort!
Well, I like it, and I think it’s a handsome whistle.
As for the choice of timbre, I don’t notice anyone getting too bent out of shape when Pat Olwell makes a cocus flute, but maybe I just haven’t read the right threads.
I wish I could have this one for Christmas, but I think my wife already has a different expensive whistle ordered for me.
–James
Looks like I DID!
Oh, wow, jeez, egg on my face.
I’m retarded. My Stuart is name.
You got me.
Stuart
I don’t have a problem with the timbre of the whistle, just its timber.
Flutes get pretty wet, but nowhere near as wet as a whistle. I just think making one out of cocus is doomed. And we can save the cocus for flutes.
Stuart
Stuart,
Did it occur to you that perhaps a flute maker might might make whistles from pieces of wood that are too small for flute sections? You don’t really think the guy is taking flute size billets of expensive and hard to come by Cocus and turning them all the way down to whistle diameter, do you? 
Loren
I assumed he was making a whistle out of each tree.
Just pull off the branches and turn it down to whistle-size.
Stuart
Good one!
Loren
Actually, I don’t think the whistle is made of cocus wood. From the color, I suspect “cocas wood” is something entirely different.
–James
Some cocUs is pretty dark. I wonder . . . Tyghress, do you know if it’s cocus (Brya ebenus)?
Stuart
I just looked at his website and he mentions that the whistle is available in polymer and cocobolo.
Hmm!
Stuart
Yeah, I’m pretty certain it’s Cocobolo.
Loren
It’s still ugly - I don’t care what it’s made out of. 
Tyg darling, I didn’t say it played like a Susato, just that it look bad like one. And for the record, I’ve seen more than one old flute/whistle (meaning 6,000 years and older) and none of them, yep not one looked even remotely like this one. No bulge, no strange mouthpiece designs. Just regular straight edged design, much like a Clarke or Generation tube.
It’s just my own opinion that I’d never buy anything that looked like that! I loved my Burke brass pro whistle, but even it’s tuning slide ‘bulge’ was a bit much for me. I ended up giving it away in the end.
You takin’ me serious, too, Brian? I thought what I was saying was so absurd, everyone would know I was kidding. I guess I gotta smile when I say stuff like that. To me, the design looks like something off a spaceship, just the opposite of a prehistoric bone whistle.
Best wishes,
Jerry