Chiff and Fipple Forums

you would think...

Even the dead steadiest of drones wavers more than a few cents if you're lucky. I do not think this is particularly good. It just comes with the territory. Virtually any instrument will waver that much for any number of reasons specific to that instrument. Even a plucked string wavers from the stres...

Just use the composite reed you have. Do the test outlined above with the drone reed as is. Use an electronic tuner so your ears are out of the picture. Then add a small round blob about 3/16" of bees wax or other sticky putty to the existing blob. Let us know what you find... and BTW, free re...

Myself, I'm talking about adding ballast to a reed whose tongue has already been scraped and flexed/arched but is still clapping shut or is still too high in pitch. There's only so much scraping and flexing you can do before the tongue breaks, and there's a hard limit to how far up you can move the...

it may be that you have never sufficiently tested it out. Would you say playing a set of reeds, each weighed, since 1986 would be sufficient? I think I estimated at some point I have played them for over 35000 hours. They're solid. With all due respect, unless you have done a test similar to what I...

Just use the composite reed you have. Do the test outlined above with the drone reed as is. Use an electronic tuner so your ears are out of the picture. Then add a small round blob about 3/16" of bees wax or other sticky putty to the existing blob. Let us know what you find... and BTW, free ree...

Let me just add one more thing... Whenever someone requests my help with their pipes/reeds I always ask if their drones are steady. They almost always say yes. When I go to check it out myself, they are almost never steady and usually very very much to the contrary. I can only conclude that they eit...

The thing is, the ballast isn't causing any of these three reeds to go sharp under higher pressure: all three are now quite steady across octaves, even up to high D. No, weight does not, in my experience, tend to make drone reeds go sharp under pressure. beg to differ... it may be that you have nev...

IME, there are surprisingly few pipers and even pipe makers that prioritize absolute steadiness in drones. It appears that most have never experienced it and thusly don't know that it's even possible to have zero pitch drift at anything close to playing pressure. I feel that it is critical to have a...

My approach has always to make a standard style head and tune the octaves by varying the staple. Patrick, Tim and others do their adjustments in the head of the reed in order to use tubing staples. Hey Ted! Thanks for chiming in... Actually, I always use my standard head design except for the lengt...

Interesting... Not feeling bad so much as curious. I don't have any memory of it at this point. I wonder if it was originally made that way or if someone had tampered with it...

My second chanter was one that was bored slightly larger through the upper regions, through the throat, all the way to the reed seat. So, obscurely identifying the following reed makers, although some will know them all immediately, DQ reeded it successfully with a rolled copper staple. I wanted to...

As I've made clear, I applaud your profound appreciation and thoughtful pursuit of the finer points of chanter design, and I am delighted to make your acquaintance here, as we have never met. I have certainly benefitted from the discussion, and you can rest assured that I will not alter any of your ...

I, for one, would always play in Em (and often in A) against drones... that being of course the point in playing union pipes that are well tuned, per Geoff's method anyway I feel, unjustly perhaps, that those who make a blanket statement that Em against the D drones sounds bad need to adjust their ...

So, staying on topic; if a chanter and reed are tuned to produce a set of perfect intervals (against its drone base) then all the various MODES will be pronounced with the emotions ascribed to them by the ancient Greeks... these différences in feeling are lost ,to a large extent, in our modern (12 ...