top of page
Boxwood Whistle in D Jon Swayne

Whistles

I developed my tuneable boxwood D whistle in about 1979. It has changed very little since apart from a few tweaks to the appearance and the voicing. At the time there was not much alternative to the mass-produced ‘tin’ whistle. My idea was to make a whistle with more power and character. Since then I have gradually extended the range of pitches available.


The scale-range is optimised over one octave and a sixth. Tuning can be varied roughly plus or minus ten cents by the brass tuning slide. As well as the usual flattened seventh, cross-fingering will also give you a useable flattened sixth and fifth.


Materials : boxwood, brass mounts and tuning slide; pencil cedar block. Mopane and african blackwood are also available to order. The larger sizes from F downwards may at times only be available in mopane because of the difficulty of getting good boxwood of the necessary dimensions.


Pitches available and prices are as follows, but please enquire if you are interested in other pitches:

                                                                             £

High G, high F                                            195

Eb, D, C                                                         245

Bb, A                                                               320

G, F                                                                  405

Low D, low C                                               695

bottom of page