Been playing the black silk, with Reed head for a few months now. I haven't thrown away my carbon fiber instruments. But they are on the back of the shelf now and they really don't compare well. The Reed head can be a little bit of a handful at times. But it's so expressive, every time I think about ordering another head, I just pick up my whistle and I'm happy with what I have.
After watching your earlier whistle reviews, I bought a classic low D Howard Whistle in black in Dec 2020. They are great whistles and I still love playing it. Thanks for all your advice and inspiration.
Thank you Stephanie for a great review. Because of your first review of the Black Silk, I just took delivery of my Black Silk with a Balanced head. The tonal quality just blows me away. The next purchase will be the Reedy head once my fingers become accustomed to the larger holes. The customer service and shipping I experienced with Howard have been stellar.
@@healingenso7923 I now have a Reed Head and alternate between it and the Balanced Head. But my favorite is the Reed Head for it’s sound. I do find that the Balanced Head hits the hi-A & hi-B easier, but it is probably just me.
@@phildent8447 - Sorry for the lag. Yes, I was working on that last night. Slurring up to high A & B is easy and I have quite good volume control. But just trying to hit them directly is tough. Fortunately, most of what I play starts out lower and I creep up on those high notes :)
I added an Howard Low D a little while ago and was recently pondering trying out the other heads yet couldn't find any sound samples for them other than your old vid on the prototypes I'd already seen. Good to hear how the final product sounds and that soft acoustic option is interesting.
Goodness how weird is this! Just last night i was looking over the Howard website and wondered how all the different heads might sound like, timing couldn't have been better haha! And they all sounds amazing! Thanks for the vid Steph!
Thank you so much for making whistle choices so much easier and for all of your wonderful videos. I'm leaning towards the nickel with the reed head and hope to buy that soon. I noticed that Amazon does not offer all three heads, so I'll purchase directly from Howard Music.
I bought my first Howard whistle and it sounds beautiful. Thank you for the amazing review. I was wondering if you can play the Genshin Impact osts with that whistle, it would be amazing.
My first low whistle is a Howard that I purchased over 10 years ago. It sounds really great but has a few issues. I've purchased two other low whistles from different makers but overall still prefer my Howard.
Thank you for making this video, I always wanted to get a Howard. Which head and body combination would you say has the smoothest, most ocarina like sound? Cheers!
It's not really an ocarina sounding whistle... But the 'soft acoustic' balanced head is probably the best head to go for, probably with one if the black bodies for that teeny bit of extra thickness...
So I’ve ordered myself a high D and I can’t wait but I’m allready shopping for other keys. What would you recommend for a 2nd flute. A low D has lovely tone but a C or A might be more usfull in a musical sense aswell as having an additional scale set. Wondering what your thoughts are?
Yup I like the look of the brass and the nickle whistles better. It is interesting that there are different heads that provide different voicing, but their finish doesn't look good does it? Are there like loads of scratches on it right out of the box? And I remember in your Kilkenny high D whistle review the difference between the brass and the nickel was very clear and the brass was definitely producing a rounder nicer tone. Did you see any difference between the brass and the nickel here? Definitely a good choice tho. I was looking for a brass low D one since the only one on my radar so far was the aluminium chieftain one. The one in this vid is the only brass look in the lowD that I've encountered so far.
I'm not sure. I guess you potentially could, if your other brand of whistle was the same diameter as the Howard whistle, but it would also really need to be the same length, as otherwise this would likely affect the tuning of the whistle too...