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From just a few years of browsing available whistles on the market, I've found roughly four main types of whistles, but within those categories there is wide variance in features (tone, intonation, chiff, wind requirement, price and range of expression). So you're still going to have to keep narrowing down your options once you figure out a few things, which I think you have now realized. These four categories share features with each other, they aren't clear-cut in the marketplace, they're just a pattern I found.
1) narrow bore, thin wall, inexpensive pennywhistle type, often with tin or simplest kind of plastic mouthpiece usually having a blade width considerably narrower than the diameter of the tube itself (the lowest priced brands and oldest style brands)
2) brass or nickel-plated tube of considerable strength and a considerably higher quality mouthpiece usually made of metal or a higher strength plastic (delrin, etc.), with considerable design expertise and quality control. Testimonials from users will typically rave of their reliability and often the tone, whether you find them of your taste or not. Bore diameters are mostly similar and tone hole size and location mostly similar. These will be priced from roughly $25 to $70. Cheapest might be a Waltons and certainly one of the best would be the Killarney?)
3) wider bore, wider tone hole and wider blade, for full tone, full volume and full range of expression. Lots of aluminium whistles in this category. Chieftain Thunderbird comes to mind and there are many others (many famous top quality brands) with varying tone and expression. The bore diameter and tone holes vary quite a bit, brand to brand, as does the level of chiff, tonal richness and issues between how the two octaves play, and the design of the blade (flat, curved, overcut/undercut options) but regardless, all of them tend to have appealing richer tone, be highly reliable, professionally designed and constructed, first-rate customer service and quality control, updated in design intermittently, mid to high volume and have loyal users. Some of these are wood bodies supported by metal mouthpieces and metal tuning slides.
4) full wood, or full plastic, and regardless of price and quality, these are often the more subdued tone whistles, shifting towards sounding like wood flutes or recorders. Some will still sound obviously like a whistle, but some, like a Susato (to my ears), sound too close to being a recorder, and I already have three recorders (soprano, tenor and sopranino). The difference in tone between a silver flute and an Irish ebony flute, is immense, and between a brass or aluminium whistle of category 1, 2 and many of category 3, VS these category 4 models, is also big. Personally I've seen a few full wood whistles on YouTube I think sound terrific, and the full plastic Tony Dixon DX001 D whistle sounds quite good. You have to know what you want here. It's a personal choice.
I hope that's enough to confuse via clarity.
Last edited by RoberTunes on Fri Dec 13, 2019 3:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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