Guido Gonzato’s “Lowteck Whistle” plans

The author

Guido Gonzato is a geologist with a PhD in geophysics; he teaches at the University of Verona (Italy).

A few years ago (2008 to 2016), he posted a comprehensive and renowned tutorial online that explain how to make tin whistles from PVC pipes without expensive tools. For a while, he also made them to sell at very reasonable prices.

The document

This time we won’t need to go through the “hole calculator” step, as the author provides plans for his own tried and tested designs, from the small E tin whistle to the C low whistle.

The pipes you will need:
Sopranos: inner diameter of 13 mm, which corresponds to tubes with a NPS of 16 mm (Nominal Pipe Size: what is on the label in the shop often corresponds to the outer diameter).
Altos: inner diameter of 17 mm, 20 mm NPS
Low: inner diameter of 22 mm, 25 mm NPS

This document is still available here:
www.guidogonzato.it/whistle/ (in English),
www.guidogonzato.it/whistle/index.it.html (in Italian).

Sound

You can listen to John M. O’Hara playing Guido Gonzato’s tin whistles on the archive of the latter’s former website (and it’s very nice):
www.ggwhistles.com/sounds.html [archive.org, 2017]

[Tin-whistle in D] Tailor’s Twist

[Alto whistle in A] Gallagher’s Frolics

[Alto whistle in Bb] Ann Maguire’s

Playing the tin whistle

Please note that the tin whistle is not played like a recorder. I mentioned above that it can be a good musical instrument, but to play it well, you need to adopt a technique that is specific to it.

What a tin whistle can do when played by an excellent player (Joannie Madden, from Cherish the Ladies): ComhaltasLive #232 – 1: Joannie Madden on Whistle

To learn some basics in Irish style, you can watch this series of video lessons:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL__nIDQ8JTGUrujMEVdDswOVOTGYnjzxj
It’s on YouTube, sorry, see the box below:

For your (and our) mental health, for your comfort and privacy,
if you need to watch (good) videos from a platform that supports fascist ideas,
you should use a frontend such as Invidious or a client like Freetube or NewPipe.
You should also promote and use Peertube, even if it is less convenient.
Ask video creators to provide a copy of their work on a Peertube instance, or you can offer to do it for them.