Chiff and Fipple Forums

What a loss. I'll always remember playing along with Planxty's first LP on a tenor recorder. Then getting a copy of a great tape of him in NYC, 1981. "There are so many mics up here, it's like the UN!" He put together elements of Rowsome/Clancy/Ennis into that great style, Todd Denman once...

Great work from NPU here. Sound's fine. Lots of tunes we haven't heard from Leo before, which are full of little surprises in their settings that these older musicians were full of - his Jolly Tinker for instance. About half is airs or marches which is a lost art as well. The piping trios that finis...

http://pipers.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Rowsome-CD-208x300.jpg From the email I received: This CD comprises of twenty three previously unreleased recordings of Leo Rowsome. The tracks are mainly home recordings provided by Leo's daughter Helena, along with several archive recordings from RTÉ fe...

Oh God that dude. I used to play the fiddle or flute, sometimes the pipes, in the middle of the night in the lobby of the the salmon colored skyscraper directly behind Darth. Night watchman job. Good times. Guess I was helping to Keep Portland Weird in doing so, before they put up billboards advocat...

Thanks for chiming in, Mark. Always loved that story. Jones sounds like a really cool guy. Juanita is a popular song from the 1850s, melody by that redoubtable Spaniard, George Frederick Handel. McPeakes no doubt picked up from Robin Roberts or some other folkie. Or perhaps it made its way over the ...

I thought Frank played an O'Mealy and Francie a McFadden. I used to tell the owner of a McFadden about that connection. These are wonderful photos. Celebrity gossip, yes. So John Lennon and Jimmie Cagney had sets built for them. I was told about a certain big Taylor copy being (supposedly) built for...

I've thought about retooling a micrometer too. But the washer works. Got that idea from the latest edition of Dave Hegarty's book.

Here's a page with some violin pencil gauges: The Tools. Includes a commercial model for $130.

I noticed Mitchell and Small didn't quite get that right, too. They seem to have adapted the chanter work to fit what he would have played too, more legato than necessary. Going by memory here, I used to pore over that book constantly. My copy of has an almost rust colored cover, it's so dog eared. ...

You can buy more expensive calipers like that ready made but what you've done is a lot cheaper. Cheaper still is filing a slot in a washer, of course. But calipers can be had for not much these days.

Amazing. I don't think Touhey would take his hand off the chanter like that, though. Seems sacrilegious given how he was Mr. Staccato. It would be impressive to his audiences though, important as he was Mr. Showman too. Anyway it could be truly anybody. Great find, Nick! Just in time for its centenn...

I've played a chanter in G - it stung - my flat set is in Bb too. Covering holes that wide apart isn't fun. I've a tape of Ronan Browne playing the Hunter chanter and he talks about what a struggle it is to get a good seal. To make pipes that big feasible you'd want to add some helper keys for the r...

Oh, I'm mostly received wisdom, first to admit it. I just find this all A Fascinating Hobby, like the man said. The main thing with these old flat sets is that at their best they just sound fantastic, I'd like more of that in concert pitch + wide bore stuff. I'd figure if anybody had played a wide s...

Egan I just singled out what with the received wisdom about his pipes being ever so slightly louder than other classic flat set makers. Maybe it would be better to speak of bore/hole sizes, the bells for instance - 11, 12.5, 14. 16? :shock: Haven't thought about those metric sizes in a while. I thin...

My idea of a good concert pitch set with volume would be basically a louder Coyne, beautiful to see and hear, which I think has been done about twice? Who's the other one? http://e.deviantart.net/emoticons/w/w00t.gif Oh, I've always championed Brad Angus's stuff you know. Preston Howard's set has t...

Mike Hanafin's playing swung like crazy, much like Liam Walsh's, or James Morrison of Sligo's. You don't hear dots and flags like that much any more, in this straight ahead session era.