Chiff and Fipple Forums

I sat transfixed and watched that documentary all the way through. Parts of it felt like a blend of The Boys from County Clare and A Mighty Wind ! Paddy in the background getting his pipes sorted, people trying to remember arrangements they've not played since the 1970s. (If you've not seen The Boys...

https://i.imgur.com/Kq68uYN.jpg What can we glean from the picture? The gouger has no real understanding of how a GHB chanter functions. The gouger has no measurable understanding of how GHB chanter reeds function. Wow that's a blast from the past!! For people outwith the Scottish Pipe Band world t...

What you're saying was exactly the impression of our Tonemeister, and the rest of the pipers, when we switched from Ross Gore-Tex bags with the cannisters and hoses to Gannaway bags with nowt inside. Personally I couldn't perceive much difference with the drones, but the chanter clearly seemed to be...

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To play the GT Session whistle roughly in tune required you to blow basically as hard as you could for the second octave and barely at all in the first octave. It wasn't good for sessions because the volume was too inconsistent. You hit upon the exact issue. Each maker has to choose where to put th...

All the Delrin/Polypenco flutes I've tried were very heavy, much heavier that the wood flutes I've owned. Are there makers who do a "thinned" Delrin flute? I imagine it would need a raised lip-plate, achieving the same blow-hole depth as a wood or thick-walled Delrin flute, to get a simila...

Thanks all for the additional data points, I think I need a bigger chart! So we have Goldie mezzos in A and G using 15mm bore, and Goldie mezzos in G and F measured with 18.2mm, 18.5mm, and 19mm bores. (I wonder whether Colin's batches of tubing have varied a bit, or people are measuring slightly di...

Contact Andreas Rogge, tell him your situation, and be prepared to spend a premium on actually getting a functioning reed to survive a trip to Africa. Start with a practice chanter. Banish ALL thoughts of budget sets, tweaking your instrument or "cobbling" together various parts of pipes ...

I will mention that the various Alba whistles I've owned sometimes have unusual bore sizes compared to most other makers. Most makers use their Low D whistle tubing (usually around 22mm ID) for their Low C, in other words the Low C is simply a stretched Low D. Colin Goldie, Reviol, and other makers ...

I bought an Alto G from Alba in early January this year. That's good to hear. If you wouldn't mind, could you measure the ID of your Alto G? I have a chart of whistle bores from various makers but no Alba mezzo/alto G yet. So far I have mezzo G Freeman (brass tube) 15mm mezzo G Freeman (alloy tube)...

The Bulgarian flute (Kaval) uses an entirely different way to be chromatic. The Bulgarian bagpipes, like the various Mediaeval and Renaissance woodwinds, have a basic diatonic scale. The Bulgarian pipe makers came up with the mormorka, Baroque woodwind makers narrowed the bore and holes and came up ...

I emailed Stacey a while back asking if she was still making Bass whistles and she said she was.

I didn't inquire about smaller whistles.

I have, by the way, three emails for her

pictx@me.com (I think this is the most recent)

albawhistles@aol.com

info@albawhistles.com

Some Eastern European bagpipe genius came up with this hundreds, perhaps a thousand, years ago. The upper-hand index finger's hole isn't a normal note-hole like the others, but has a long extremely narrow bore. Somehow (I don't know if anybody understands the physic at work) opening that tiny deep h...

The Hungarian chanter has what on the Bulgarian bagpipes is called the mormorka (I don't know the Hungarian name for it) which is operated by the upper-hand index finger. On Bulgarian gaidi opening this hole raises the pitch of any note below it by a semitone; in other words it transforms a diatonic...

I would have to see a diagramme, I'm having a hard time visualising it. What does exist in the bagpipe world, scattered across several Eastern European countries, is a double-chanter setup with "counterdrone". Bored in the same piece of wood is the normal chanter fingered in the normal way...