Can someone comment of the Tony Dixon whistle / piccolo combo? I play the Boehm flute as well as the recorder and thought that this may be a good fit for me while learning the whistle. I see that there is a tunable combo as well as a non-tunable combo. Should I consider this? Maybe another of his whistles? Thanks.
I don’t know about the whistle/piccolo combo, but I have the Dixon trad D and I love it. It’s my favorite along with my Feadog.
I have both the high D whistle/piccolo and the low D whistle/Flute combo. I have owned about a dozen Dixon whistles and flutes, including the three-piece polymer flute. They have represented good value in my book.
Dixon whistles can be quite nice. They have a nice sound to them, IMHO. I have had a couple with less than perfect intonation though. So I would suggest you “try before you buy” or purchase from a retailer with a return/exchange policy. As for the piccolo, it works ok, but I find it’s use limited compared to band piccolos, decent fifes or other high pitched folk flutes I own or have owned. But the price is not too bad if you would like to experiment.
Another nice option, and another price tag, would be one of the whistle/fife trios (3 piece set, two heads, one body) from Ralph and Walt Sweet. I played a Sweetheart rosewood whistle and folk fife for years - very nice little flute.
http://www.sweetheartflute.com/whistles.html
Hope that helps some.
Feadoggie
It should also be mentioned that the Dixon whistle/flute combos like their whistles alone are in transition right now. The new models have a bulge where the tone tube fits into the headpiece and are voiced to be louder, presumably for session use. I just bought one of the old models from Harp and Dragon in C with the Alloy body and like it very much. (the old style models are getting tough to find now though) THe newer, louder versions havn’t been talked about much yet but have had good comments on the few times they have been mentioned. The model which is all PVC with a brass tuning slide has (IMHO) the nicest tone of all of them and is still available with the older voicing. If you are going to learn the whistle, I would think that you’d want a whistle that dosn’t “advertise” your mistakes with volume that you don’t need.
As far as intonation goes, out of the seven Dixons that I’ve had the C’s have been somewhat better in general than the D’s but none have been terrible. The Trad model had the best (intonation) but a tone which seemed slightly harsher than the all PVC, at least on the one I had. As far as overall value , I’d agree with Feadoggie.. Not bad at all
hope this helps… DreamOgreen
Thanks all. Yes, the replies have helped. I figure at the price they are offered at, I really can’t go wrong trying them.