Chiff and Fipple Forums

I've not tried any Goldie "high whistles" but the Goldie Low D, Low C, and Mezzo F I have are just about as perfect as whistles can be. The troublesome bit with most whistles is "going over the break" with good intonation. On my Goldies I can go up the scale from low-octave B to ...

I got to play quite a dozen or so wood headjoints (of four or five different woods) on the same silver Boehm body and my experience was that most of the tone and performance came from the headjoint, not the body. I would keep the Boehm body I'm already used to, and try various wood headjoints on it....

paddler wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 7:40 pm I would have liked it even more if it had a slightly narrower bore...I feel that way about all the low D whistles I've tried.

Yes it's a tricky compromise with Low D's.

What I want to try is a Colin Goldie narrow bore Low D. It might be the perfect Low D for narrow-bore fans like us.

I don't think you'll find such a thing as a "Generation style" Low D whistle. You can't just make a Generation twice as big...well you couldn't but it wouldn't be playable. Yes the Howard and the Kerry Optima both have metal tube bodies and plastic tops, but IMHO neither could be called a ...

While all of my whistles are tunable, and I wouldn't buy a whistle that wasn't, I do acknowledge that I generally keep them tuned at the same spot. Here in California we're not faced with extreme weather. But, though it's rare for me to move a tuning slide, the tuning slides of all my whistles are p...

Having regularly played an original Rudall & Rose c1830 flute for over 20 years I feel the need to point out that the pewter plug footjoint keys (which I regularly used) always worked flawlessly, sealed perfectly, and needed no maintenance whatsoever. (And Low C and Low C# were in tune, despite ...

Ginsberg full set collection in person only. Seller says needs reeding. That looks identical to the set I owned back in the early 1980s. It was a well-made boxwood set, but didn't have the original chanter. The chanter was a roughly-made basic chanter of some sort of cheap blonde wood. (The name of...

I wonder if it has to do with temperature. I tend to keep my room very warm, and I have to pull the slide all the way out to get it in tune. Is your house on the cooler side? Temperature can make a large difference to how you tune your whistle and, consequently, how in-tune your whistle is with its...

Tyghress wrote: ↑Fri Nov 17, 2023 5:29 pm Finally found an Original Syn and was satisfied...

I see what you did there.

In other words, trying a large number of Low D whistles didn't suggest that a flat 2nd octave was in any way endemic or characteristic of the breed.

Quite the contrary, it showed that makers could tune the octave relationship however they wanted, from extremely flat to extremely sharp.

I find this thread puzzling because I've not encountered a Goldie with a sharp 2nd octave. So currently I own three Goldies, a Low C, Low D, and mezzo F, and I've owned and borrowed and tried quite a few Goldies over the years. Now of course any whistle's tuning is a product of how it's blown. But a...

I nearly got to see them around 1978. By the time the audience was seated in the hall the announcement came the band was stuck in customs at the ferryport, unable to make it. A memorable "what might have been" story! I have since seen all members in some context or other but the magic and...

For Eb I just used a Generation Eb body on a D head I liked. But I did chop a Generation C to make C# and a Bb to make B natural, and the same process would work to turn a D into an Eb. Having no measurements to go by, it was a trial-and-error thing. I think the order is important: 1) chop the top o...

And as we know it's the case with musical instruments that it's not just who made them, but when they made them. Every Sax player I know plays a 1954-1962 Selmer Mark VI. So it goes with whistles- people who have played a load of whistles from a particular maker can probably distinguish between vari...

First, how do Goldies handle the upper octave? Are they able to play relatively quietly all the way up to, say, a B? Is there any screechiness up there? Speaking only about Low D whistles, I bought and borrowed a large number of different makers' Low Ds and put them through their paces. Yes High B ...