I have, or had, all of these models of Serpent whistles and I found them all consistently unplayable. I worked with Bill without success for over six months trying to get one that I could play. They were all very hard to blow and when I blew hard enough to get musical sound out of them the musical tones were nearly completely masked by the constant hiss. I’d like to think that my experience was an anomaly. Then again, maybe I’m the anomaly. But I would not recommend these whistles for beginners.
Mike
Hmmm. I may be the anomaly - don’t know. I agree that the earlier model Pollys needed a somewhat-unusual embouchure (the Brassy Polly in particular), but I find my Sweet Polly is about as easy to play as a Sweetone. On the other hand, I like a moderate amount of backpressure.
I’ll also add my support for Dixons - my Dixons are my regular travel whistles. And I’ve played them outdoors when the temperature was well below freezing, so I agree they’re great “winter whistles”. If I warmed them up before starting to play, I’d usually have to go inside to thaw my fingers before clogging became a major problem. 
I don’t know about the serpents except from hear-say but Sweetone is by far the nastiest whistle I ever got my hands on so I am not sure what you say is a recommendation But at least the Sweetones are very cheap. :roll: :roll:
O’Riordan D and C. Had a Burke which was very nice - but traded it for a new uilleann reed some years back now. Hoovers are also right up there though. Mack’s got some skill there’s no question. 
Cheap they are.
I do think they’re easy to play (especially for beginners - they’re pretty forgiving) but I don’t really care for the sound. If we’re talking cheap whistles, my own preference is a good Generation. But if you hand a beginner a randomly-selected Sweetone he’s far more likely to be able to play it than a randomly-selected Generation, unfortunately.
I should probably think about getting a Humphrey just-intonation D.
For me, it’s the Burke aluminum narrow-bore (#DAN), followed closely by the Whitecap Oak.
I don’t find my Dixon tunable particularly hard to play–as long as I’m careful, but it’s so far out of tune with itself that even I notice it. I see that lots of folks love theirs, so maybe I just got a bad one. At any rate, I never play it.
I’m afraid the Whitecap Oak may have transmitted a case of WhOA to a friend. I got a chance to go out and see him play fiddle with his Bluegrass band on Tuesday night. It had been over a year and a half since we’d seen each other, so while we were catching up after show, I mentioned whistles and ended up getting the Oak out of the car and playing a couple of slow airs. Then he was asking how much it cost and where he could get one. Maybe I’ll pass the Dixon on to him to discourage him from getting into whistles. That would be the right thing to do, wouldn’t it?
Burke brass Narrow Bore or Session. Their response is the same, but the air requirements are different. The session takes a “normal” amount of air, about the same as a Generation. The Narrow Bore requires less air and is a little quieter.
There are some low end whistles which are easy to play, but if their tone causes listener fatique to kick in after a minute or two, then they might as well be unplayable. Sweetones and my old Feadog are in this category.
This thread is making me realize that I don’t think about how easy a whistle is to play anymore. They’re just different now. I think since I started out they all have become easier to play and harder to play.
You must have lived a protected life! 
Interesting thoughts. “Which whistle do you play best?” would probably be a better question.
For me it’s probably my old Gen Bb.
Ido, I avoid the world at large.
Seriously though, every time the subject comes up I pull the old Sweetone from the vase with the useless whistles and confrirm it is godfeckin awfull. Admitted, it’s the c that is supposedly worse than the D but the D I bought at the same time I gave away, couldn’t bear having it in the house. FWIW I have never ever seen even a vaguely serious whistleplayer play one, in fact I have never sen anyone play music on one.
I used to have a nice one (D). I should have kept it. Gave it to Mack Hoover.
I go with Bloomfield they are just different to play. There are some that are easy enough to play but they just aren’t pleasant to my ear. The Susato comes to mind. Some I find to have such an unpleasant sound as to be virtually unplayable. However, I find that a particular whistle may match my mood on a particular day. That will change from day to day and sometimes from tune to tune. There is nothing quite as nice as a good Generation. Many a Generation has been tweaked that didn’t need to be. The individual just needed to spend more time learning how to play it. Been there, done that, am guilty.
Ron
Check out Markamot. At 1:05 and 1:44 it’s clear he’s playing a Sweetone. Maybe we can take up a collection and send him a nicer whistle…
Hands down, Burke black tip brass D.
Philo
Would you believe that some people would suggest that one should hunt through several (possibly dozens) of certain brands of cheapies until one finds a “good one”? I wonder if those same people would make the same effort to find a “good” sweetone, or would just dismiss them based upon the one or two that they had and weren’t happy with. What do you think?
One would think that as seriously as the Faroe Islanders take their music, they would import some better whistles.
Actually mine is a C
In my experience, unlike the brand-which-should-not-be-named-here-but-it-does-start-with-a-G 
, Sweetones are rather consistent in their sound and playing characteristics. In my opinion, searching through dozens of them to find a good one would be a fruitless exercise.
I agree with Peter that Sweetones are pretty awful. No, not (by far) the worst whistles I have had the misfortune to have tried but darn awful all the same.
That being said, I do think Sweetones are very, very easy to play for a beginner, being about as forgiving as one can imagine. That they have a crap sound is another matter altogether.
Jens
I’m not a fan of Sweetones, but I owe them a big debt. A friend of mine who is a great whistle player decided to switch to a tweaked Sweetone as his primary session whistle. This despite owning a slew of whistles which I would have thought were better, including a great O’Riordan Traveller D/C set (which he sold to me for a song, now my main whistle), Water Weasels, Burkes, and a Copland. I believe it was the conical bore tuning that attracted him to the Sweetone.
Not sure what he’s playing these days, as he moved away from the area a couple of years ago.