G'day weepiper,

I presume the first part is more signifant in your choice of name ... I am a bit shorter than current Australian average, at 165 cm, and have short broad hands.

My very traditionally spaced Overton low D needs me to use "piper's hold" fingering ... placing the 1st pad the third finger normally over the hole and skewing the right hand round to use the inner pads on the 2nd and 3rd holes. I don't need to skew the left hand, because the spacing is not problematic ... nowadays.

I made a series of low Ds with variant positions of the lower 3 holes and these are somewhat better to play without resorting to "piper's hold" - but I have recently played a Colin Goldie Overton low D where Colin gets the lower holes closer at no appreciable loss in tonality, volume of flexibilty! I'd love to buy one like it ... if the Aus$ : Deuthscmark didn't look so dire. (Of course, I might get round to knocking out a few more om my low Ds after looking very closely at how Colin acheived what he has ...

Regards,

Bob Bolton