small/er pipes

[maze]

Any recommendations on an indoor set of small/er pipes for an uilleann piper/occasional highland piper? I've heard Faerie pipes (lovely) have shuttle pipes (keep overblowing)… would like something that good and solidly dependable but not necessarily at the cost of a set of uilleann pipes as I have to send my daughter to college someday.

A or Bb or D?

Would welcome the input.

slainte

maze

[BigDavy]

Hi maze

A would be my suggestion, it works best if you are playing with another instrument - especially uilleann pipes.

From what you said in your post, you say you have shuttle pipes?. If so, why not get them fixed up reed wise so you don't overblow them. I have seen too many accidents with drones and small/border pipes.

Shuttle pipes would be my choice if I wanted to play any other pipes than uilleann.

David

[pancelticpiper]

Of course uilleann pipes and Scottish pipes are completely different animals and it (to me) doesn't make sense to discuss them together.

For uilleann pipes the quiet way to go is with a 'flat' chanter, down in B perhaps. A narrow-bore B chanter with a soft reed is going to put out much less volume than a big-bore strongly-reeded D chanter.

For Scottish pipes, SSPs can be very quiet, often too quiet. Usually the problem is to get them loud enough.

I've never cared for the John Walsh 'shuttlepipes'. (Keeping in mind that 'shuttlepipe' isn't a type of bagpipe so much as it is John Walsh's brand name for his SSP with shuttle drone.)

What work far better are John Walsh's 'Smallpipes in A 2000.' All the reeds are plastic, and the set comes from John perfectly 'set up' and voiced. It can't be beat for a low cost extremely reliable good-sounding set of SSPs.

Here's a video of somebody playing one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBgUUYhMXSI

Most people coming from Highland pipes wildly overblow SSPs and it takes a while for them to get used to the lower pressure.