Musical Instruments & Teachers (musicalinstrumentsandteachers)…read moreColin Goldie has been making Irish whistles (penny whistles - tin whistles and low whistles - think the intro to Riverdance - to the uninitiated) specifically Overton Whistles until after Overton's death. He now markets his whistles under the name of Goldie and to state a simple truth, his instruments are even better to play than the Overtons, of which I own several. These instruments will be made to your specifications, and before he bills and ships, he will call you and play a selection of whistles for you - so you will have a very good idea of exactly what you are getting.
For several years. my mainstays in the soprano/mezzo-soprano whistles has been the Harper Classics as the Overtons were hard to come by and had a long waiting list for availability. However I do have one of the older, early Overtons, non-tunable in "D" soprano, that outplays the Harpers. The new Goldies are a definite a cut above even the Overtons. His whistles are extremely well voiced and balanced over the entire two octave range, and I can usually get at least two notes above the second octave by over-blowing the whistle a bit.
The Goldie whistles make playing and ornamentation of a piece a lot easier than any other whistles I have ever owned. Simply stated, now I can just relax and play a piece and not have to think about "tweaking" my playing to make things come out right. Specifically, this amounts to having to unlearn a lot of bad habits I developed playing lesser whistles. Now I can just relax and play a piece and not have to fight to make it sound right.
I can not overstress how impressed I am with the quality of the whistles Colin produces. His whistles are among the best in the world.
Now that's the stuff!