'85 would be around when I got my first Sweet D piccolo ('fife for folk music'); the head joint of that one unfortunately stayed in France after a wedding gig (the body made it home, the head didn't). My later D piccolo is still going strong, but I am tempted by one of the Professional D fifes ...

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Steve Mansfield
http://www.lesession.co.uk

Pancelticpiper, that was a MAJOR walk down memory lane!! My second whistle was one of the old flageolets in blackwood. Back when I was collecting.

Tygh

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Remember, you didn't get the tiger so it would do what you wanted. You got the tiger to see what it wanted to do. -- Colin McEnroe

Yes for me too!

As I had said my first Irish flute was a Sweetheart one in the late 1970s.

By the early 1980s I had a rosewood D whistle, a Baroque flute, and mezzo flutes in F, G, and A.

I used the small F flute in the band quite a bit- the string players would capo up 3 frets and we could all play as usual but get a quite different sound, it was terrific.

Among the old stuff I have is a typed letter from Ralph (there was no internet in 1980, believe it or not).

Also among the old stuff was a small stack of Xerox copies of the Irish Flute page of the Sweetheart catalog. In the 80s I was going around to festivals teaching Irish Flute workshops and I'd hand out those sheets, advocating beginners get Sweetheart flutes. At one festival a shop would stock up beforehand and show up with several Sweetheart maple D flutes. I'd stop by the shop on the way to my workshop, pick up a few, and let people try them. The shop would sell several each weekend to people who had taken my workshops.

A great-playing wood Irish flute for $125? You just couldn't do better.

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Richard Cook
1978 Quinn uilleann pipes
1945 Starck Highland pipes
Goldie Low D whistle