Mathieu Paquier, Vincent Koehl, Cédric Moign. "Effect of drone reed material on great highland bagpipe sound."
Acta Acustica united with Acustica, Hirzel Verlag, 2016, 102 (4), pp.752-762. <
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/dav/aaua/2016/00000102/00000004/art00015>. <10.3813/AAA.918991>. <
hal-01341956>
I've seen only the abstract, but it looks intriguing. The researchers recorded bagpipe tenor and bass drones both individually and in a full set, with cane reeds and with synthetic reeds, then had expert listeners assess the quality of the sound. They found no significant correlation between quality of sound and drone reed material.
For tenor drones, they also found that the listeners tended to prefer drones with more power in the fundamental and less in the higher harmonics. Synthetic drone reeds were more likely to have this quality, although not so much that it showed up as a correlation between sound quality and reed material.
A pity they relied on recordings, rather than live performance. The abstract doesn't mention what they used for the chanter reed.