I wrote to Clarke and they verified that this whistle is just their Sweetone model, with the added cost of a Celtic paint-job, a song sheet and a pretty box.

If this whistle becomes unavailable here, or if you’d like a different color, try to find a Sweetone elsewhere.

If you’re a beginner, the Sweetone is the whistle for you. Music teachers have told me that there’s nothing more frustrating for a beginning student than trying to make music on a poor quality instrument. This is a high quality instrument, at a relatively low price. It has three things going for it:

(1) It’s in the key of D, the preferred key in traditional folk music. Also, length determines key, and the longer key-of-C whistle requires a wider stretch of the fingers to cover the holes, which players with small- to average-sized hands can find uncomfortable.

(2) Unlike other lower-priced whistles, it has a conical bore [tapered tube] rather than cylindrical bore [straight tube]. This gives it a more secure and consistent tone — no squeaks, squawks, and honks on particular notes. I’ve thrown away more thin-metal straight-bore whistles than I’ve kept, because of “bad” notes. Buying them, it’s luck-of-the draw — you may get a good one, once in awhile. A great player can get a good sound out of a poor instrument — master of the French horn Dennis Brain once famously got decent Mozart out of a garden hose — but we are not at that level.

(3) Unlike its famous predecessor, the Clarke original, it has a plastic mouthpiece, so each Sweetone has the same tone quality. The Clarke original has a mouthpiece formed by hand, by wrapping tin around a wooden block, so some sound much better than others. This can be adjusted or corrected by an experienced player, by judicious bending of the metal, but we don’t know how to do that successfully.

When you’re a more confident player, you may want to try a Clarke original model. It has a different tone — softer, sweeter, more “breathy.” And it weighs less, making fast complex passages easier to play — lets your fingers “fly.” On the original, I can play Yankee Doodle start-to-finish in 10 seconds.

I learned to play using Bill Ochs’ book “The Clarke Tin Whistle.” The “Deluxe Edition,” available from Amazon, comes with a CD. The excellent book begins by explaining musical notation, for the student who doesn’t already read music, but that doesn’t get in they way for those of us who already do. The CD follows the text step by step, including dozens of tunes, so you can actually hear the sounds that can come out of a Clarke tinwhistle in the hands of an expert. Something to aspire to!

Customer Video Review Length:: 0:48 Mins

I decided to add a video review to this page, to show how the flute sounds, rather than write it.
It has a nice tone, is a little shaky at points, but overall, a FANTASTIC buy for such a reasonable price!
I recommend to anybody who wants a new instrument. […]

I did add reverb to this video to make it sound more… i don’t know… hills of ireland-y 🙂

As I start this review I want it understood that despite the fact that I come from a very musical family, the musical gene, for some unknown reason, completely passed me by. Oh, I grant you that my parents spent a small fortune when I was young on piano lessons but much to their chagrin, that did not work out so well. I took up the trombone in 7th grade, made it through one semester, and was told by my band teacher that I probably should concentrate on some other, nonmusical, endeavor. I have played the harmonica for a number of years but my wife is the only one who knows that fact until now. She can, at times, sort of identify the piece I am attempting to play.

Ah, but this tin whistle! I paid one dollar for a Sweetone; bought it from a friend, in 1959 and it was a major financial set back for me. But I did love that whistle. In 1963 my wife and I were on a three day hiking and camping trip in Palo Duro Canyon, Texas with another couple. The first night around the camp fire I entertained. The next morning I found that my beloved whistle had gone missing. My wife assured me (she never lies to me and I trust her) that she had seen coyotes sneak into the camp late that night and steal the thing. I was devastated.

Last year my trusted wife presented me with a new Clarke! She stated (with a certain amount of guilt in her eyes) that she had always felt bad about not stopping the furry creatures from taking my original instrument. What a nice lady she is. Anyway, I love this new Whistle. It is indeed, as others have pointed out, a Sweettone but with a fancy paint job.

The Clarke whistle, the one being reviewed here is in the key of D. This is good as it is much easier to play due to the shorter finger span requirements which the key of C requires. This is very important when you’re my age and your fingers are starting to loose their flexibility and agility.

Now I play this instrument strictly for my own enjoyment. I have no delusions that I any good at it, but I receive a great amount of pleasure and satisfaction. The tone is quite good once you figure the thing out, and it is not all that difficult to play. It certainly helps, especially if you are as tone deaf as I am, to be able to read music, but that is not an absolute necessity. Note: Despite what some may tell you, a tin whistle is NOT a recorder! These are different instruments, sound different, play different and require different skills.

Bottom line is that this is a fun thing to play. I, per my wife’s request, play it on the back porch with our four dogs; these dogs have wonderful musical taste and the oldest, a Boston terrier, sings along with me. My grandson, age nine, was listening the other night and I heard him tell my wife about it. I heard the word “awesome,” which I assume was directed toward my playing, and I heard the word “pathetic,” which beyond a doubt was describing the dogs singing. I was happy.

Speaking as an amateur who only wants to have fun, I can highly recommend this one for those of you in my category. I do love this new whistle! It should be noted that the price here is quite good and you will receive a great amount of pleasure for very little coinage.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks