Chiff and Fipple Forums

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Oh yeah. I know

A lot of poster's remorse here.

Our Seán did get a bit uninhibited, it's the season and all that after all.

MichaelRS wrote:So what I'm hearing from a lot of responses to my posts and reading other post is that if one is going to pick a whistle from either Generations or Waltons or Feadog, it's really half a dozen of one or six of the other in most cases because they're all pretty much the same level of quality control and playability... at least when it comes to the high D & C whistles.

And picking either brass or nickel does not make a REAL difference because the nickel is only thinly nickel-plated brass.

Have I got those two points about right? Or is there somebody that happens to excel between those three in a particular offering or another? Or if not Excel then one that does whatever the opposite of excel is in a certain area from the others.

Hi Michael.

I would have thought they were all identical, pretty much, but...
The other day I happened to be left alone with a few dozen boxes of whistles -- Generation, Walton, Feadog, Clarke and Schilling. Naturally, I tooted out a few carols on quite a few of them. To my surprise, there were fairly well defined differences...

The Clarkes of course were conical and sounded like Clarkes. Never mind that.

The Schillings were abso-freaking-lutely horrible. Where possible, I filed away a few of the more egregious defects out of the kindness of my heart but most of them remained barely playable. There were a few other 'lesser' brands that were almost equally horrible. Really horrible. If some luckless child got one in their stocking, they'd give up trying to play it in half an hour.

Now for the others:

There were a bunch called 'Feadog Pro D' that were head and shoulders above the others in the lower octave, and also (for some odd reason) quite a bit heavier than any others. They were a bit finnicky in the upper octave (then again, I can't really play, so I'm sure it would have been fine for anyone else).

The regular Feadogs were good.

The Generations varied -- I picked a few different ones out and for a terrible player like me, there were definitely quite a few that were hard to play. Then again, there were many that were fine. The lower octave was not as lovely as those Pro Ds.

The Waltons varied a little more -- many were fine, but many had feeble bottom notes, or were just generally hard to avoid squeaking on.

After a couple of hours, I had formed about the following scores in my mind:

Feadog Pro D 9/10
Feadog 8/10
Generation 7/10
Waltons 6.8/10

Disclaimer: I'm no whistle guru, and maybe some of these boxes happened to be from good or bad production runs.

Considering that we're talking about a world in which everything is well under 10 pounds, I see no reason not to go Feadog Pro all the way. Except that I already have several whistles, like everyone else here

Too bad this board doesn't have something like a "like" feature where you can just acknowledge isomebody's post without creating more ancillary replies on the thread. Oh well.

Anyway, I get email notifications when it come and comes in, so I have read and I do appreciate all the constructive comments.

In addition to the Generations Bb and the Waltons and Feadog C's I decided to throw that Dixon brass Trad D in the mix with my order from Hobgoblin Music USA this time around. If past is prologue, with the service from Hobgoblin, they should be in my hot little hands a week from now.

That should bring my whistle ordering much closer to the end for now. Outstanding for the near term will be a Freeman Blackbird, a Cillian O'Briain and that Susato Oriole 4 pack.

For now I continue to mostly practice on my old Dublin Susato D and my more recently acquired Dixon DX 001.

MichaelRS wrote:Too bad this board doesn't have something like a "like" feature where you can just acknowledge isomebody's post without creating more ancillary replies on the thread. Oh well.

Socializing up front is the whole point of this website from its beginning. If you have something to say, then you say it and be counted.

I wouldn't be so quick to compare C&F's pre-Facebook ways to later formats with like/dislike functions; think of us instead as akin to a hands-on traditional craftsman for whom the latest marvel of 3D printing has proven irrelevant to his work. "Likes" and "dislikes" are only anonymous drive-by votes, not conversation, and as such don't meet the behavioral criteria for socializing - which, again, is what we're about here. Besides, everyone knows those "like" numbers can be falsely represented, and it seems these days that people tend to even expect that, so its value is frankly lost on me. You get none of that iffy business here, and vive la différence.

[Off topic]

I really like this site, (& one of my harmonica forums), because of its social nature, I hated the FB linear format when I tried it - long live forums such as this.

Please don't neglect the Susato. Yes, they're plastic. Yes, they're (relatively) cheap. But I own two high(ish) end whistles - Abell and Milligan - and the Susato is up to gigging along with either of those. Some of the more available 'cheapies' are wonderful, others are dreadful - as others have said, you really do need to play them to check. And finding a cheapie that can play beautifully gives me a buzz - I only paid a couple of quid for something that can hold its own with my Millgan (just). But in my (limited) experience, the Susato high Ds usually work well, cross the octave without de-tuning, and can hold a high C# without screeching!