We all have our preferences concerning which whistles have a pleasing sound and which don’t. To some extent, those preferences are conditioned by what we hear as we play, which is different from what other people hear. In a session, most of the nuances of timbre get drowned out by other instruments, including other whistles in the mix, but I sometimes play solo sets at open mics (or mikes). So, not long ago I got the idea of bringing a few different whistles with me and asking the people in the room which ones they liked best.
I don’t have a huge collection of whistles, and this is obviously not a scientific experiment. In particular, I don’t own any “high end” whistles. I have a Freeman Mellow Dog, a Freeman Blackbird, a brass Dixon trad, an old-style flat windway Chieftain (maybe that’s sorta high end?), a Shearwater, a Guido Gonzato, and a Parks Ghost whistle. All high D.
At any given open mic, I’ll just have two or three, and switch between them. What I’ve found surprises me. The audiences overwhelmingly prefer the sound of the Gonzato and the Parks Ghost to any of the others. Personally, I’m partial to the Dixon and the Blackbird, although I like the sound of all of them or I wouldn’t take them out to play. The Gonzato and the Ghost are the only two non-metal whistles in the bunch. To my ear, they don’t sound much like each other; the Gonzato has a somewhat “reedier” sound. But they do sound a bit different from all the metal whistles, in having less of a “ringing” quality, if that means anything to anyone. I’d say I’m imagining these nuances, but my informal experiments indicate that audiences–in this case people not particularly tuned into whistle music–prefer the non-metal whistle sound.
I wonder if anyone else has noticed anything like this.