Comparison : Kerry Optima / Nightingale

[Maxence]

Hi everyone,

I would like to know if someone here tried these two models ?

- Kerry Optima Low D (Phil hardy)
- Nightingale Low D (A. Karavaev)

Do they sound the same ?

[caddguy]

I just took delivery on the Optima Low D...based on the comparison video Phil did recently against his Kerry Pro of same key.
I thought the Optima sounded much better and hence why I bought it.
I am now having second thoughts on these whistles. This thing is unacceptably sharp in the second octave starting at the C#..Everything is at least 25 cents sharp! Tired three different tuners, 2 digital and one analog...all the same.
His response was :
First, if you are using a digital tuner blow harder.
These whistles are not concert pitch as they folk instruments and have a tempered tuning like a piano.
We sell around 100 per month and have done over the last 14 years and I have never had a problem with them regarding the tuning.
We make batches of 100 at a time and all the mouth pieces are the same.
I am very happy to refund if you are not happy but I'm out of the UK until the 18th July.
If you have the original packet, the return address is on the back.
I look forward to hearing from you.

In other words, SOL. ALSO Unacceptable for an expensive whistle.
That's like if your guitar is in tune, but there are notes that are out of tune at the top of the neck, that's an intonation issue and the guitar was not made correctly. The same goes with any wind instrument!
Production whistle or not...these are not being manufactured correctly at all and he chooses not to look into it.
These either need better quality control and spot checks or he needs to stop production and revise his CNC instructions to fix this. I am guessing that for the most part people do not wander into the second octave, so it has not become an issue to most. Irish music has become more open to creativeness into other registers, just look at Brian Finnegan's music very expansive/expressive, not just strictly trad tunes.
I am going to send it back, I could possibly work on it and fix it, but my time is worth more to me.
"Blow harder" gezuz what a cop out.

[Terry McGee]

Now this is a plain cylindrical low D whistle, caddguy? I didn't think it was possible for the second octave to be sharper than the first on such whistles. I'll admit to never having played a low whistle! Others with more experience might want to chime in here!

And I was a bit intrigued by the advice to "blow harder". Presumably that meant "blow harder in the lower octave", as just blowing harder in general would tend to sharpen both? But is there room to blow harder in the low octave, or does that just trigger it to jump to the next?

I'd be interested to hear the outcome of this little experiment, if you haven't already packed it up to post it back!

Pick a note that you feel goes too sharp in the second octave. Let's say it's the G to make my instructions easier to follow.
Tune the whistle so that the second octave G is now in good tune. Note, that is second octave G.
Now test low octave G. Presumably you'll find it a bit flat.
Blow a bit harder in the low octave and see if you have room to bring it up to pitch. How much further can you blow it before it breaks to the second octave?
Recheck 2nd octave G to make sure it has stayed put. (IE, the whistle is not warming up.)
Report back so we can think this through some more.

I'm wondering if this is a "high resistance" style of head that requires the player to blow harder, and if perhaps you are used to "lower resistance" heads on your other whistles?

[Peter Duggan]

Now this is a plain cylindrical low D whistle, caddguy? I didn't think it was possible for the second octave to be sharper than the first on such whistles.

Yes, it is, Terry. It might defy acoustic expectations, but I've experienced it with several whistles including a Kerry Optima low E returned in 2011 because the top half of the second octave was just crazy sharp and, to a much lesser extent, with Impempe and injection-moulded Lon Dubh high Ds which remained playable with care. But I've also encountered crazy flatness, most notably with a secondhand Alba high D that needed (and could take!) more pressure than any other whistle I've blown to get anywhere near pitch in the second register and I sold on because I felt that pressure in my head too!

[Terry McGee]

Very interesting, Peter, thank you. Yes, very familiar with flatness - my Soodlums "Mellow D" suffered from that until I "did a job on it", see http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Tin-whistle-retuning.htm It's no longer flat, but it's no longer mellow either! Which is OK, as I like a bright powerful sound.

But if plain cylindrical whistles can be too flat and too sharp, they can hopefully also be "just right". (Would Goldilocks recommend Baby Bear brand?)

I guess the obvious next question is what physical differences might explain the too sharp and too flat examples. Any thoughts anyone?

Enlarging holes tends to sharpen the 2nd octave faster than the low octave. Is it possible that "too sharp in upper octave" whistle holes should be a little smaller and a little further up the tube?

[pancelticpiper]

I just took delivery on the Optima Low D.

This thing is unacceptably sharp in the second octave starting at the C#..Everything is at least 25 cents sharp! Tired three different tuners, 2 digital and one analog...all the same.

I can't find the thread now, searching "optima" under "thread titles" in the Whistle Forum didn't bring it up, but several years ago there was an Optima Low D Tour and I was one of the tour whistle's stops.

At the time I was buying, borrowing, and trying every Low D I could get my hands on. I played a huge number of Low Ds (including as many as a half-dozen examples from some makers) which allowed me to get a feel for what was "normal" in Low D performance, and what were the outliers.

I know saying "normal blowing" sounds silly; normal is whatever you're used to. But I did find that the majority of high-quality Low D's had their octaves in tune using pretty much the same sort of blowing. With both low octave notes and 2nd octave notes you can underblow and overblow each note a bit for expressive purposes (many will be rolling their eyes about now).

Not many makers deviated from this, but some good makers used a flatter 2nd octave than usual, and at least one good maker used a sharper 2nd octave than usual.

And one can see why, because there are performance advantages with each.

I owned and played a number of old Bernard Overton Low Whistles and these often (but not always) had somewhat flat 2nd octaves.

To play the octaves in tune you have to blow the low octave below the pressure where it would give it fullest sound, and blow the 2nd octave rather higher than its minimum speaking pressure. What advantage is this, you wonder? One cool thing is that you can back off on 2nd octave notes until they become much flatter and whisper-soft, without them falling to the low octave. As I put it, there's a ton of "room under the notes" to play around with.

The main problem with this octave-tuning approach was that it exacerbated the bane of Low D whistles: the discrepancy in volume between the low notes and the high notes.

The MK was, as I recall, the only top-drawer Low D with a slightly sharp 2nd octave. I owned six different MK Low D's and they were exactly the same in this regard.

To play the octaves in tune I had to strongly blow the low octave, not far from the point where the notes break into the 2nd octave, and underblow the 2nd octave, not far from the point where the notes fall down into the low octave.

It's really cool to play a whistle like that because you're blowing close to the middle the whole time, with only slight blowing adjustments required between high notes and low notes. The 2nd octave is remarkably light, sweet, and facile while the low notes are big and growly.

This sharp 2nd octave also minimises as much as possible the ever-present volume difference between the octaves.

But when I got the on-tour Kerry Optima I discovered that its 2nd octave was even sharper than the MK's.

I was very much used to how the MK played, blowing the low notes nearly to their breaking-point and really backing off on the 2nd octave, but in spite of this I just could not play the octaves of the Optima in tune. Even with the low octave notes so overblown that they were starting to flutter and break they still weren't sharp enough to be in tune with the 2nd octave, it being so underblown that the notes were unstable and dropping to the low octave.

Other than that, I loved how the Optima played. Since the tour whistle was an early model I had assumed that the octave tuning issue would get sorted in the production model, but evidently not.

[stanton135]

I participated in the Optima tour as well, and I also found the octave tuning to be as Richard describes.

Here's the thread with the reviews from the tour: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=95717