Before I get into the specific questions, I'll give my background, which is 40 years now of playing GHB and 35 years on the uilleann pipes. I've played SSPs for many years too. Around ten years ago I got infatuated with this 'border pipe' thing and bought the following chanters:
1) Hamish Moore "reel chanter" in boxwood
2) Nigel Richard (Garvie Bagpipes) "session chanter" in blackwood
3) Jon Swayne "Lowland chanter" in ebony
(None were called "border chanters" by their makers.)
Here are the Garvie and Swayne chanters, both with High B keys (the Swayne has the imitation ivory sole)
Though the makers called these chanters various things ("Lowland", "reel", "session") they were all the same beast, with the following characteristics:
-volume somewhere between the GHB and the SSP
-use ordinary GHB fingering
-use rather low pressure, lower than my two SSPs
-capable of playing a number of accidentals
-key of A, Concert Pitch A=440
-finicky about fingering, very unforgiving, and tend to squeal when going from High A to Low A unless you place the thumb a split-second before the fingers
-more finicky about pressure than either the GHB or SSP
-often available with extra keywork (I ordered two of the three with High B keys)
Of course it's the chanter's very instability which allows it to play accidentals! On most SSP chanters you can finger any note more or less any way you want and it comes out the same or nearly the same. Modern high-pitch big-oval-hole GHB chanters (combined with strong ridge-cut reeds) are somewhat like that, for example you can often leave the lowerhand fingers off for E and E still sounds more or less at the same pitch, and oftentimes crossfingered Cnat and Fnat won't work.
Nicolas86 wrote:
they are a sort a of GHB which is quieter
Not really, because the chanter's narrower bore creates instability which allows for chromatic fingering.
Nicolas86 wrote:
The chanter enables you to be sort of chromatic. Is that the case?
Varies from chanter to chanter and reed to reed, but nearly all of these chanters will give you a good crossfingered Cnat, D#, Fnat, and High G#. (BTW all of those except D# are also possible on many GHB chanters. I've yet to encounter a GHB chanter that will give a good crossfingered D#.)
Some border/lowland/session/reel chanters will also give a good crossfingered Bb, thus giving you one chromatic octave.
Nicolas86 wrote:
they are next to impossible to play in tune
No, just more unforgiving as to dodgy fingering and bag control
Nicolas86 wrote:
Can one get a quiet set of GHB and put a border pipe chanter?
I don't quite know what you mean by "quiet set of GHB."
What I did was to get a 100 year old set of Glen "halfsize or reel pipes" (what all the Highland pipemakers used to call them, what we call "three-quarter pipes" today, a term that didn't exist 100 years ago) and reed them up to play at A=440. This set performed excellently with any of the three chanters I owned.
Here they are! The three sizes of Highland pipes offered throughout the 19th century by all the leading Highland pipemakers.
Here is what the makers called them back when they were all being made and sold:
L-R
1) Great Highland or military bagpipe (in blackwood by Dunbar)
2) halfsize or reel pipe (note that the halfsize pipe was, in fact, around 7/8 size. We call this instrument a 'three-quarter size' pipe today) (c1900, ebony, ivory, and nickel, by Glen, with a Jon Swayne "Lowland" chanter, key of A, with High B key)
3) chamber or miniature Highland pipe (what we call a 'Scottish smallpipe' today) (c1900 cocus and ivory with original cowhorn mouthpiece, possibly by MacDougall, with a blackwood chanter by John Walsh, key of A)