…anyone? 
Supposed to have been played in All IR Championship.
It does have an appearance of a reder…I guess that’s the reason I can’t go for a Sweetheart, and, for this nice sounding instrument. No matter how nice it may sound, as long as it looks like a reder, I won’t and I can’t. What a pity.
Should I buy a Sweetheart first and practice sanding off the ‘extra bits’ ?
Stop with them looks! Tulip-shaped heads are an elegant way to make a robust all-wood head, else you either have to oversize it, or end up with a metal band contraption around it. I find THAT looks terrible, though I do understand their (99% American) makers: most of them probably know better, but need to escape the so-called “recorder” looks.
Also, some of the best recorders don’t have to look like the standard school plastic cheapies cast after museum Baroque samples. Many of them sound closer to a good whistle (chiff, unbalance, low end and all) than to a Baroque recorder, too…
this is a modern (Bleazey’s) recorder:
This is a Ren Mollenhauer recorder:
Well, I wouldn’t mind trying one out
Not to mention this…
Hell, I wouldn’t mind trying this one too, while I’m fighting my way through all these &&@@$*% accidentals in “Nuages” (D. Reinhardt) and its weird scale.
Want a whistle which doesn’t look at all like a recorder, but really like a tin whistle ? Play a Gen, or take a Shaw, or Susato! Of course, spray the latter matte silver with this paint sold for stove pipes, so it will look like “trad” aluminUm and its Soviet militaro-industrial design! 
Btw, you may have notice the new “Professional” by Sweetheart has significantly shaved some width from the former models. They got the message :roll:
To me, the main difference after all between whistles generally and recorders generally is very much like between fiddles and violins: it’s what, and how, you play it.
Looks aren’t everything/don’t judge a book by it’s cover/etc etc. The other day I polished my Copeland brass Low D…today I played it for a while. It’s still all smart and shiny…
We have builders…the youngest (in his early 20’s) said and I quote verbatum: “What’s that? A fancy recorder?”
Sigh.
Trisha, who gets on with her Sweet with silver rings just fine…
Zub,
It so happens that this morning I made a mental note to search the board for your posts on different type of recorders–and then I saw this thread. Would you mind a short disquisition again on that subject? What I mean is, I seem to recall you mentioning that modern and/or renaissance recorders allow for much easier access to the top end, and other benefits I don’t recall, than baroque recorders. I believe you even mentioned specific brands, and brewerpaul got into the discussion. It seems there were some relatively affordable plastics in the mix.
I’ll go do the search now, but any comments you might want to add would be welcome.
I do have another request (he can only ignore me, right?). I’m pretty sure from previous posts that you have a Sweetheart Professional and like it, and you also have some other rather cool looking conical bore whistles, including le Coants. Now I see you writing about Bleazy instruments. I have a Sweetheart Professional that I like, too. Would you be willing to compare Sweethearts to these others, especially Bleazy?
Oh! Yet another request! Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham play a beautiful Cajun waltz called “La Vie Est Pas Donnee.” I don’t know any of the words, but what does the title mean to you? For starters, I would have expected “N’est” but also perhaps song titles are sometimes too abbreviated to give the total meaning. It’s a beautiful wistful tune that I used to play on my fiddle in my pre-tendonitis days, and the title somehow seems evocative to me.
Thanks.
Well, I found the earlier thread and it looks like it was the Mollenhauer Renaissance model that piqued my interest. If anyone has any experience with these, I’d appreciate hearing of it. The list price is $105 for pearwood–single or double-holed.
hmmm…maybe I should get a Sweet and see if I can get along with it first might develop an acquired taste, etc.
As wooden whistles go, to my mind the finest is the Bleazy. Looks nothing like a recorder, and sounds like a whistle should. They actually look similar to the ‘recorders’ shown in the post above but without the big metal bit in the middle. There is a small brass bit on the whistle but this is for the tuning slide
I’m nothing like a recorder specialist. Just a photographer whose Holmes fiddle (désolé, Ingres…) would be the whistle.
I don’t even own a good recorder. Just a soprano Aulos picked at a garage sale for one Euro, because it came with a clever plastic tube and a new swab 
Also a Tenor keyed Aulos, which I puchased to try out low C… then got a low C Alba which remains one of my absolute favourite whistles.
Brewerpaul is the specialist, and he plays true baroque chamber music on the right kind of instruments.
When I stand for some of the recorders qualities, it’s not just to be the devil’s, or underdogs’, advocate (well, maybe that too 
)
Take a whistle; design it to reduce chiff to an absolute minimum; give it perfect volume balance along as well as across both octaves. Give it a true ability for cross-fingered clean tones, then make the necessary (lower tones) half-holing clean and relatively balanced… What do you get? The recorder, a perfect instrument in its own right. Now we find it too bloody balanced for our own chiffy purposes, ok, but who of us had a chance to hear a good trad music solo on a concert recorder?
Now, the whistle makers didn’t miss that. Take some of the best–I’ll quote only O’Riordans, you’ll figure out the others–and you’ll find a recorder’s head engineering (to avoid the word “design”, often confused with styling). Take others, like Copelands, and you’ll find a bore extremely close to a baroque (!) recorder’s. Overtons are a different story altogether… but there’s a lot of Boehm flute influence in them! Finally, the only whistle design which is truly original, and owes nil to recorders is exampllified by Susatos (technically, Grinters are amazingly close, btw…). And what do some say on Susatos? recorder sound… That’s a final proof that the design and appearance have little to do with the sound.
If I ever make my own whistles completely, they may well end up with a “pig nosed” lower hole for Eb. If I was to sell them, then I’d have to work around the problem of it looking “like a recorder”, and end up with a normally-closed single key… And loose simplicity just because of looks and their market acceptance.
As for what you asked about Bleazey, I never had a chance to play one long enough, and this only outdoors. I preferred both YLC’s and Swayne’s, but this is certainly not a final judgment. As for apparent worksmanship, he was on par with both others. I hope I’ll know better next year after St-Chartier festival.
For La vie est pas donnée the best translation I’m capable of is: “Life ain’t cheap”.
“La vie n’est pas donnée” would be more like : “ Old chap, arrumph… the cost of living is rather not cheap, is it?”
Finally the “Adri’s dream flute” by Mollenhauer seems to become their hit model, and is spreading to Alto, keyed Tenor, and even cheaper versions with a plastic head. It can’t be chance, when they pay extra expense of a licence to Adriana Breuking.
Now, if you would like trying out a nice sounding recorder, while shying away from the “school soprano recorder” sound, give a try to a wooden Renaissance Alto (F). I understand Susato (!) sells Adri’s “dream flute”… What do you think, Paul?
thanks. maybe i’ll check out the susato site–i didn’t even know they make recorders. i hate their whistles.