Hope it’s OK to post this here! I have an original low D Overton whistle, purchased direct from the maker (within a batch of whistles), which is quite simply too large for my small hands and fingers! As such, it’s unplayed, new and with its original bag. If you’re interested, feel free to message me.
JM27 ~ you might want to give us a little more information, as I see you’ve just joined to sell your whistle. There’s nothing wrong with that, but most of us have been members for awhile before we sell something on site here, and we’ve also had a few scams that have come our way via similar means ~ sudden membership. It is often prize instruments like this being offered ~ one lovely grey Paolo Soprani, one owner, an old lady that never played it… 😉
One way of securing trust would be to have a friend who has been a member on site here for a few years offer their support. If your a regular in the local sessions out your way that shouldn’t be a problem.
For convenience in the sale and for interest’s sake, give us at least your basic geographic situation…
Best of luck in your sale…
Point completely taken! I’m based in London.
is is tunable?
It should sell quickly then… 😀
Here’s hoping you stick around and find other uses for this site… Welcome!
Not tunable, I’m afraid, Claudine.
No offence, but I’ve seen 11 year old girls with 11 year old girl’s hands play overton low Ds. Maybe you should give it a bit more effort before you give up? It’s not an easy instrument to play. The best instruments never are.
I’m afraid that it’s not worth risking as I have some degree of RSI in my right hand anyway. You are also underestimating how small my hands are!
I’m guessing the whistle was made by Colin Goldie rather than Bernard Overton?
Usually the difficulty of playing a larger whistle is the vulcan stretch. In order to finger the low D hole you have to stretch your ring finger on the right hand. If you’re not used to doing that you may get some tendon pain up near your elbow. Not saying llig doesn’t have a good point, just letting you know it takes time to get comfortable with that particular stretch. Overton’s are grand!
I would be interested if it were tunable.
Good luck whatever you decide.
Welcome to the mustard board.
Have you been on the tinwhistle site; chiff&fipple?
It was actually one of the last few that Bernard made before he sadly passed away.
Most of my livelihood these days is based on playing other instruments, so although I’d love to master the piper’s grip on it, I’m probably best off leaving it for the sake of having working joints on my hands!
The other whistles sound great. I had some non low Overtons years ago in the band I was touring in, and nothing beats the tone of them!
I haven’t looked at that site, but I will do.
I do appreciate all the advice I’ve been given on here by the way!
Proof of semi-consiciousness ~ yes RN ~ C & F
http://www.chiffandfipple.com/
RSI is hell…
I don’t understand the desire for a tunable one. If Bernard Overton (or Colin Goldie) made it, it will be in tune. Why would you want to make it go out of tune?
Yes, I keep saying the same thing but nobody listens… 😎 A whistle could only be truly tunable if you had a slide between every hole… If you detune A:440 to meet someone else’s tuning then the further you moved away from the A the more out of tune the whistle would be with itself… However, a little variation can be adjusted for in how you blow the thing… I can’t see anyone wanting to deal with a fully tunable whistle with 7 tuning slides, but it’s an idea…
That’s true Michael. This sounds like it could be a fine whistle.
Perhaps I find it convenient to do a slight tuning when I grab a whistle & don’t warm it up 1st. So that is not good enough of a reason. I have other reasons but I know you don’t care to hear those either.
If nothing else, it would be an interesting project for an engineering student.
I believe Pat O’Riordan & Michael Burke are engineers.
You need to keep it in an old sock on the inside of a pant leg Random… 😉
Though someone might take you as a terrorist hiding a deadly weapon…
Laz ~ The trick would be to make the tuning slides have a fail safe, so the bits didn’t keep dropping off…
this is getting silly but it would be something like a full - extension drawer slide with ball - bearing. the weight would . . . no that’s a mess. Michael was right!
;)
With a multiply tuned whistle you’d have to have calibration marks all over the place otherwise it would be only too easy to lose your place and then the instrument would be producing a tonal scale unknown either to gods or men - you can sometimes hear those in sessions anyway 🙂. Adjusting the frets on a lute or viol would be a doddle by comparison. That’s why I said it would be an interesting project for a student engineer.
Another idea, instead of multiple slides, would be to have movable holes; by which I mean each circular finger hole would be in the middle of an elongate plate adapted to slide longitudinally in or against a fixed longitudinal aperture in the whistle tube, so that according to the placement of the plate in that aperture the finger hole could be in a chosen position anywhere along the length of the aperture, thus enabling that hole to be individually tuned.
Again, reference marks would be useful to help with the tuning.
The engineering detail would, I think, be mainly in getting each plate to slide without coming loose and, critically, without affecting the tonal quality of the whistle.
Incidentally, this is an occasion when a couple of free-hand sketches would be worth scores of words of text!
There’s nothing special about whistles. You have to tune a flute, an
oboe, a clarinet, a saxophone, a trumpet.
To say that an instrument was ’tuned
at the factory’ is a great old muso joke that I heard a lot when I
played in an Army band long ago.
This whistle would be in tune at room temperature. However, on
stage it could be much hotter under lights and you’d want to pull out.
At a folk festival it could be much colder, playing outside or in a tent
-- you’d want to push in, if you could.
Also you might want to pull out a bit so that you can really blast the
upper register without blowing it sharp … etc etc etc … all kinds of
reasons
With clarinets - my specialty - sometimes you pull out at the middle joint
as well as the barrel to try to even out the effect.
On open holed instruments you also micro-manage the intonation by
controlling the height of your fingers over the holes and sometimes even
microscopically covering one side of a hole. You’d be doing that
mainly when trying to get really tight intonation with other instruments
in ‘real time’
One of the reasons the Overton whistles are alluminium is that this material has a very low expansion and contraction rate with temperature change. Unlike steel or tin. And one of the reasons the instrument has very little dynamic range is you have to give the thing exactly the right pressure to play it in tune, especially on the high notes. Some people think they can get a reasonable dynamic range out of them, but they just play the thing out of tune,
Lazyhound’s engineering solution might be over-complex when the answer is already at hand: http://www.bonnersmusic.co.uk/buy/Music_Gift/Swanee_Whistle
Don’t mind Random, JM. He actually cut the fingers off and had a surgeon re-attach them just so as to play that low D note. Course he messed up and cut the wrong hands, but if you knew him it’d make sense.
This one’s better. It’s from Bernard.
by better I mean better than any of my other low D whistles.
The only Overton I have is one of Colin’s, in F.
I was playing her last night after reading JM’s post.
A fine whistle. A very fine whistle!
Dad, you know I could always play the low C.
Once I tried a low A, a chieftain at lark camp, someone had returned it & the price was dropped. We’re talking major stretch.
The low C is grand. I’ll leave it to someone else to play anything lower, except maybe something with keys.
“Lazyhound’s engineering solution might be over-complex when the answer is already at hand: http://www.bonnersmusic.co.uk/buy/Music_Gift/Swanee_Whistle”
Now why have I never seen one of those at a session?
My “engineering solution” was of course envisaged as no more than an exercise for engineering undergraduates - something to make them think and come up with new ideas. I’d be surprised if anything commercially attractive came out of it. But then there’s always the punter who’ll buy into the latest fad just because it’s the latest.
I’d been thinking ‘swanee whistle’ through all this, while also wishing my wife would let me add another piece of plumbing to assorted other instruments. She is of the mind that if something new is to arrive something old must be sacraficed.
I have played a swanee whistle in a session, and at one point there were several of us playing the trombone of whistles. It was a hoot, if not always on the mark… 😎
On the subject of stretch and Overton whistles ~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESr6jrVSSuk
I’m told that Colin has made some adjustments, including offset third finger holes…
Tuning changes with temperature aren’t really about the whislte changing size as it warms up/cools down, but rather about the changing air density as the air’s temperature changes. And it does this lartgely through contact with the whistle windway… So, No whistle is temperature insensitive.
They may be “close enough”, especially if playing solo or merging into a large “carpet” of noise. However, from personal experience, trying to play in tune with a single whistle player and the rest of the group can be painful. As soon as there are three people playing whistle or flute then the tuning becomes much less critical and a bit of leeway is acceptable. (“choir effect”).
So, having the whistle tunable _is_ desirable. Of course, then the player needs to know how to tune it…
You get the same “choir effect” with fiddles.
What a cop out: “As soon as there are three people playing whistle or flute then the tuning becomes much less critical ”
Make the effort, to bre in tune. Don’t settle for that soft mantovani sh*te. Listen to the atention a good string quartet puts into intonaion and settle for nothing less.
I like that ~ “Make the effort, to bre in tune.” Especially as I pronounce it ‘bray’…
